Nothing to Trade
by S3pia
Summary: I wished I'd kicked that vaultie out of my saloon the first moment I laid eyes on her, James be damned.
1. Chapter 1

My first fanfic, rated M because it's chock full of swearing, a smattering of sexual themes, violence, and all around general unpleasantness. Characters and what have you belong to their respective companies.

I never thought I'd write a fan fiction—I don't write much at all, really, fiction or otherwise—but something about the video game fired off some little spark of creativity, and I thought I'd see where it went.

Follows general canon, but with some changes, obviously. As you'll find out—or at least, I hope you will, because that means you'll be reading. And I'll know that you're reading this because you'll review it. And then I'll know someone's reading and I'll get all tickled and I might be inclined to write more, if the mood strikes me. That's generally how these things work, right? So, please, by all means, read and review.

Chapter 1

The days passed as they always did; stiflingly hot and miserable. Business was always down in the summer. The regulars still came, but there was precious little cap intake otherwise; it was too hot to fuck, and alcohol tended to make people sweat too much—something that could kill you in a place like this. That didn't stop some people, though, and I was pleased that Nova had found someone to roll. Night had yet to fall, but Nova and the Johnnie had already selected a bottle of whiskey and taken the party upstairs.

The saloon was practically empty. Jericho had come in for lack of anything better to do. Gob was idly wiping down glasses, staring into the middle distance, his mind clearly elsewhere. They were mutually ignoring one another. I didn't pay either of them much mind—I had a book. A real book, not some trashy magazine with half the pages stuck together and all the best nuddie photo spreads long gone, not a decidedly bland instruction manual rendered almost completely illegible by scorch marks, but an actual novel. Moira had come across it somewhere, still in it's plastic sleeve, the pages brittle but still as pristine as the day it was printed, the cloth binding soft and luxurious to the touch.

It'd taken all my charm to weasel it away from Moira. She was reluctant to give it up, but a conductor and a coil of solder sealed the deal. She'd said the book was too dense for her anyway. I had to keep consulting the dictionary on my computer console, but the story had dug it's hooks into me and I was more than happy to be taken in by it. I'd picked a corner near one of the larger gaps in the siding that afforded the best late afternoon light.

The novel was a fascinating glimpse of the past. The original had been written almost four hundred years ago, but, shit, this Conrad guy could have penned it yesterday. Death, murder, money, exploitation of the weak, man's inhumanity towards man, the alluring, terrible savagery of the wilderness...some things never change. I could have sat there all day, contented to just read, finances and inventorying be damned. It was a welcome distraction; I'd had a lot on my mind during the past week, most of which made me unusually ill at ease and frustrated, and there was something reassuring about reading a story that I was unacquainted with but already knew like the back of my hand.

"_He declared he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and then cleared out of the country, because he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased—__"_

The hiss from the radio abruptly ceased and took on a smooth, static-free quality that I hadn't heard in months, maybe years. The difference was so startling that I actually tore myself away from the book and looked up. What came on over the air was eerily fitting:

"_So, bongo, bongo, bongo, he don't wanna leave the Congo, oh no no no no no! Bingo, bangle, bungle, he's so happy in the jungle, he refuse to go!"_

"_Don't want no penthouse, bathtub, streetcars, taxis, noise in my ear!"_

"_So, no matter how they coax him__—__" _

"—_I'll stay right here!"_

The Andrews Sisters' voices rang with a beautiful silvery quality in the smoky room complimented by Danny Kaye's handsome tenor.

"Alright!" cheered Gob, breaking into a grin. Even Jericho seemed to brighten at the improved sound quality.

The song finished up, and then, _"Hey there boys and girls, can you hear me out there, Megaton? Republic of Dave? Ten-fuckin'-penny Tower? Hot damn, because we are Back! On! The! Air!"_ Three Dog. Shit, that guy's voice put my teeth on edge, but I listened on. _"And all thanks to this crazy kid from Vault One-Oh-One!"_

Most of what he said I already knew, mainly that the vaultie was trying to follow her father's rapidly cooling trail. I wasn't sure why Three Dog was bothering to keep the kid anonymous, because I imagined the whole damn wasteland would find out eventually, but I knew it was the same girl. How many Vault 101 refugees with fathers named "James" could there be? It was the same girl that glided rather than walked in here a week ago, painfully naive, so desperately out of place with her clean hair, exotically pale skin, charming mannerisms and shy smiles that could easily make a man weak enough to fall in love with her.

Three Dog was also somewhat vague as to how the girl had actually gone about the monumental task of boosting the signal, but he wasn't short on praise for the two former Vault 101 residents. I stifled a smile. The knowledge that the girl wasn't dead in a ditch somewhere left to the radroaches and vultures took a surprisingly heavy weight off my shoulders.

"You hear that, sir? Three Dog says Audrey's alright," Gob called to me, still ginning.

"I'm sure as shit not deaf, if that's what you're getting at," I replied, trying not to let on that I was as pleased with the news as Gob was. His smile wavered, but didn't disappear.

"Hey, was that the girl that was in here the other night?" asked Jericho. "Tall, pale, long hair, nice tits?"

The grin vanished at that. Gob pulled enough facial muscles together to look appalled, as if Jericho had just dropped his pants and pissed all over the bar (which he has, on at least one whiskey-soaked occasion), or suggested that Nathan's wife, Manya, was still a hot piece of ass. I wondered if Gob had to practice his limited range of facial emotions at the one remaining sliver of mirror in the men's room, and how he could stand to look at his own reflection that long if he did. He relaxed with a sigh; reforming Jericho's manners was apparently a job for another day.

"Yes, that's the one," he rasped wearily.

"And she had to jump through hoops and do some goddamn awful favor just to find out where her daddy went?"

"It would seem," he said, and the clouded eyes that locked with mine resembled chips of ice. One of the more visible muscles in Gob's jaw twitched.

"Fuck, I woulda just put a gun to the guy's throat if he was standing 'tween me and something I wanted."

"Well, I suppose that's the difference between you and her," said Gob coolly, probably looking at me with as much loathing as he thought he could get away with without getting me out of my chair, the cheeky little bastard. He'd been awfully uppity lately. Christ, was he still pissy about the thing with James' kid? Everything had gone down a week earlier, and, besides, it wasn't any of his fucking business what arrangement the girl and I had come to. She hadn't even had to kill anyone. Hell, she'd even turned a little profit. But I knew that wasn't what he was sore about...Again, though, that was none of his fucking business. None whatsoever.

I was about to put in my two caps, but there was a scream from upstairs. This wasn't that unusual. Sometimes, when Nova got bored, she'd really crank up the theatrics in the hopes that the Johnnie would get all tickled, think that he was some sort of sex machine, and shoot his load faster so Nova could roll over and get some peace for once.

But this scream was filled equal parts rage and fear, and cut drastically short.

"Wha?" Jericho turned stupidly towards the stairs, but I was already up out of my chair, book discarded as if it were totally worthless, gun in hand, crossing the room in two strides and taking the stairs three at a time. I tried the door to the rented room—locked, of course—and I pounded a fist on the metal.

"Open this fucking door!" I shouted. There was a shuffling from inside.

"No! Help! Colin, HELP!" Nova shrieked and there was the sickening sound of fist striking flesh and another scream.

"Fuckin' bitch laughed at me! I'm gonna give her something to _really_ laugh 'bout!" the man shouted back. He was some filthy wastelander, if I remembered correctly. Not that it mattered; I would have strung up "President" Eden himself, if he'd had the nerve to start shit in _my_ fucking saloon.

God, the key, the key, where was the damned _key_? I managed to pull the leather lanyard from my neck with the key dangling on the end of it and rammed it home, turned the knob, and pushed, the door smacking off the wall with a reverberating boom.

They were both naked, but I paid that no mind, because the Johnnie's hands were around Nova's throat and she was flailing, her face quickly turning a disturbing shade of purple, trying to scratch the fucker's eyes out with her nails but he hung on like a bulldog for the kill. He looked up and saw me and in that instant decided to abandon the woman, reaching for a knife in a scabbard that he'd set on the bedside table, but before he could even brush a fingertip across the hilt I pistol-whipped him across the face, the edge of the clip taking a J-shaped chunk of flesh off his cheek and he fell back against the bed.

Nova was a blur. She gathered the bedclothes around her and streaked for the door behind me, gasping for air, tears and blood streaming down her face. Neither of us paid her any heed. The man roared in pain and outrage with a hand pressed to where the blood was quickly welling—he was bigger than me, a lot of men were, but I was Colin Motherfucking Moriarty and I was fucking _pissed_.

Johnnie made a move to get up and I pressed the muzzle at the hairy little divot between his eyes. He stilled. He was drunk, and his eyes practically swam in whiskey, but the cold metal against his sweaty skin must have been immediately sobering.

"Turn over!" I yelled. He hesitated. I thumbed back the hammer and stood back. "I said _turn the fuck over!_"

He did this quickly enough, the dirty son of a bitch. "Wrists crossed behind your back. Thumbs up, fingers out." He obeyed reluctantly, probably trying to figure out what I was planning. I laid down the pistol on the bed and slipped the key from the leather thong. He could have flipped back over and nailed me if he wasn't so fucking drunk but I was quick with the knots and presence of the gun kept him from struggling. The strip of leather wouldn't hold for long if he really tried to get free, sweaty and big as he was, but it would keep him trussed for a little while. Besides, I heard Jericho and Gob come up the stairs behind me, and despite what either of them thought of me, I doubted they'd let the man that had strangled Nova try to kill me.

"What're'ya gonna do? Get the Sheriff?" asked the anonymous Johnnie into the mattress in a moan.

Indeed. Oh, what to do, what to do? I took a deep breath. In. Out. Needed to get my head clear, needed to think, come up with something. Get Simms up here? Why the fuck would I do that? This didn't concern him. I could have just shot the Johnnie, short and sweet, instant gratification—or, better yet, taken his own knife and gutted him right there on the bed—but what good would either of those options have served but a big mess to clean up after? No, no, a _spectacle_ was in order, a reminder of why you don't want to fuck with me, a move that people would talk about for years to come. A sort of cold curtain had come down over me. I wasn't angry anymore, not even the least bit upset. There was just a grim sense of conviction, of purpose. But why a show?

Because I have a fancy for it. And because I can jolly well do as I fucking well please.

In an instant, I knew what I wanted to accomplish, and how I was going to go about it. I thought of Gob—but, no, he was too spineless, and he'd probably let me down right in the middle of it. A "reformed" raider on the other hand...

"Jericho! I need you! Now!" I expected him to make some smart-ass comment, but he kept it to himself. He came forward but paused at the doorway, indecisive. "Help me get him outside."

"What's in it for me?"

"Three bottles, top shelf, your choice," I said in one breath without hesitation. Apparently that was enough.

"Just tell me where you want 'em."

"Gob, get that sack of crap that I was going to sell to Walter," I ordered, not bothering to look to see if he'd carry it out. Of course he would. He always took notice when I had a gun in my hand.

"What're ya gonna do ta me?" the wastelander moaned.

"We're going to see the law of this town." To Jericho, I winked. He stared at me for a beat, then smiled. We grabbed the wastelander under his swampy armpits and dragged him downstairs none too gently. He really was rank—apparently hygiene is not too high on the list of priorities for wasteland survival—and I wondered how Nova could have gotten that close to him without gagging. I swiped a length of rolled up chord off the peg on the wall near the door and hung the loop around my neck as we went. I holstered my gun; I'd need both hands free.

We dragged the asshole outside to the catwalk, whereupon he immediately started yelling, probably working out that I had no intentions of fetching Simms, or at least not taking his chances.

"Pin him."

Jericho did so, and with gusto, slamming the the guy's shoulders into the floor and squelching the Johnnie with a forearm across the throat, crushing his windpipe, making him drum his bare heels on the metal even as I pinned his legs with my own. He kept struggling until he felt me touch him somewhere very specific, and he went dead still. That was until I took the looped chord from my neck. The Johnnie finally put two and two together and he started writhing underneath me, trying to buck me off. I could see why Nova would have found him amusing, if she had indeed laughed; miserable bastard might as well have been a twelve-year-old boy, for all the impressiveness of the equipment in my hand.

I tied a constrictor knot, pulling it taut, making sure it wouldn't slip, and Gob stepped out through the saloon's entrance. The ghoul had come back with the heavy canvas bag of scrap metal that I'd bought off Wolfgang for a song, the exposed tendons and veins of his arms bulging grotesquely with the effort. What was left of his face was grim, determined; he knew what I was planning, surely, and didn't disapprove in the very least. He liked Nova, maybe even felt something like affection for her, and I regretted ruling him out so quickly. Would have saved me some booze, at least.

"Thank you, Gob," I said cordially as he dropped the bag next to the railing.

"Anytime, sir."

A few people had looked up, mildly curious but disinterested, when Johnnie started yelling—yelling was nothing unusual outside my saloon—but at the sound of the bag's resounding crash to the catwalk, everyone within earshot looked up. Andy Stahl watched, slack-jawed, from the counter in front of the Brass Lantern. Lucas Simms turned from his usual post near the town's entrance, then slung his rifle into his hands and started running in our direction. He was fit, I'd give him that. I heard the leather around the Johnnie's wrists straining and snapping. Not much time. I pulled the bag's drawstring tightly closed, made another knot around the bag's shoulder strap.

"Hey, watch out down there!" I shouted over the side of the railing, and several people wisely backed away. I stood up, pulling the bag up with me, grunting with the effort—Christ, it was heavy—and I dangled it over the side of the catwalk.

"Jericho."

The ex-raider lifted his arm from the man's throat. He drew in a desperate, rattling gasp, then started screaming.

"No! Oh, God, no, no nonononoNONO_NO!_"

"Balls away," I yelled, grinning, and let the bag drop.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Lucas Simms came along some time after Jericho, Gob and I retired to the relative coolness of my saloon's interior. The Sheriff's prized rifle was in his hands, and he looked like someone had shit in his hat. Which is the expression that he usually wore whenever he came around to visiting me. I guess I just have that effect on people like him.

"Howdy, Sheriff," I said.

He glared at me. "Are you responsible for killing that man out there?" he demanded without preamble.

"Killed him? Oh, no, I just gelded him. Is he dead, truly?"

"Bled out before Doc Church could get him down to the clinic." Frankly, I would have been shocked if he'd lived; there's a lot of blood that runs through that particular section of the body.

"Cry me a fuckin' river," said Jericho.

"Shut up, Jericho!" said Simms, suddenly rounding on him. "I know Moriarty put you up to this, but don't you think for a second that your ass is off the hook just 'cause you got your own place in town—I can still run you out of Megaton like any other goddamn raider!"

"That a fact, old man? Go ahead. I'd like to see you try, you sorry-ass motherfuckin' cocksucker—"

I laid a hand on Jericho's shoulder. "That's enough of that for one day," I said. Jericho looked like he could have gone on, and I knew he had no shortage of creative vocabulary, but the last thing we needed was a shootout in a small metal room. Would have undone what little I'd accomplished that day. His face drawn into a snarl, Jericho turned to the bar and helped himself to one of his well-earned bottles of scotch. I turned to the Sheriff. "Simms, will you point that gun to the floor before you do someone mischief?"

Simms glared at me with a contempt people usually reserve for radroaches and pedophiles, but he wisely pointed the business end of his rifle away from us. "You wanna explain why I shouldn't take the three of you outside and put bullets in your goddamn brains?"

"Three of us?"

He jerked his head to the side, indicating the ghoul. "I saw him helping. As far as I'm concerned, he's an accessory to murder." This obviously hadn't occurred to Gob, because what was left of his living skin went pale and he gaped at the Sheriff with abject horror. He looked ready to start gibbering on in his own defense, but I shot him a look that said: _I know what I'm doing, _and he reluctantly shut his mouth.

"Oh, give it a rest, law-man. We both know you're not going to be shooting anyone today."

"That a fact?" Lucas Simms asked in a deep rumble, quiet but dangerous, menacing. I've always envied that voice of his—not that I'd admit it to him, of course. "How'd you reckon?"

"Well, it'd be a mercy to shoot Gob, but he was going on about how he wanted no parts of it in the first place. Wasn't till I pointed me gun to his head and told him that it would be his balls next that he'd deigned to lift a finger to help us. Coerced unwillingly into the whole sordid business. Isn't that right, you lazy fucking corpse?" I glanced over at the ghoul, giving him a hard, meaningful glare.

The ghoul nodded curtly. "It's true, Mr. Simms," he said gravely. Ha. _Grave_ly. Always cracks me up. Gob looked disgruntled about being called a corpse yet again, but, whatever, I'd smooth everything over with some little favor for his troubles later.

"And you won't be throwing out Jericho now."

"No?"

"Because he's the best shot this town has. Lose him, and what will we do the next time the raiders come a-knocking, or those big green mutie bastards? Frankly, we need all the firepower we can get, especially when the person in question can hit a bloatfly between the eyes at a hundred yards."

I wasn't exaggerating. You get two men together in any one place and they'll any excuse to turn almost anything into a contest, even if there's nothing at stake but bragging rights. We'd had our own little Megaton shooting tournament about half a year ago. I'd come in a close fourth behind Simms, who in turn had come in behind Stockholm, but Jericho had come in at an easy first.

Of the four of us, Stocky had the most practice—God only knows how many hours he'd whiled away up taking pot-shots at molerats and redscorpions, and Little Lamplight produces some fine marksmen, but Jericho was in a league of his own. It was amazing that a man that got as habitually shit-faced as Jericho did could focus his eyes at the same time and direction anymore, let alone be coordinated enough to hit five whiskey bottles flung into the air without a single shot wasted, but for some shooting comes as naturally as breathing. People like Jericho were useful to keep around.

"Fuckin' A," agreed Jericho, and lifted his shot glass in honor of himself before he downed it. "You're goddamn right."

"And you're sure as hell not going to do anything to me."

"And why not?" hissed Simms venomously.

"Because you won't find a single person in Megaton that thinks what I did was immoral. When the word gets around that I killed some wasteland-piece-of-shit drifter that tried to murder a defenseless woman in our own town, they'll all agree I did the world a favor. I'd be surprised if I don't get a medal after all this. Or at least some sort of badge," I said with a pointed glance to Simms's tin star.

He glared at me savagely, then his face softened slightly. "He tried to kill Nova?"

"Yes." Truth be told, I don't know if the man had intended to kill her. Perhaps he'd just wanted to scare her a little. I guess we'll never know. But his hands had been around the girl's throat, and that was going to be proof enough for anyone.

"Why the hell would he try to kill her?"

"How the fuck should I know? Why does anyone do anything out here? It's not like I had time to play twenty questions with him."

"You should have come gotten me first!" Simms growled, "This isn't your personal Goddamn playground, Moriarty! _I'm_ the fuckin' law, and _I_ decide when justice needs to be done!"

"Wait, are you angry because I ripped off a man's balls, or are your panties in a bunch because I didn't bother to get a permission slip?"

If looks could set things ablaze, I'd be nothing more than cinders. Simms glanced around, then shot me another scathing look. "Where's Nova?" he demanded.

"I imagine she's upstairs patching herself up."

"Nova, get down here!" he shouted.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Simms, let the girl be—"

"Shut up, Moriarty! NOVA!"

"Just a minute!" she screamed down the stairs hoarsely, her voice breaking on the last syllable. There was some shuffling and then Nova came halfway down the stairs, still barefoot. She hugged a ragged homespun shirt around her body, trembling as if it were the dead of winter. Her lip was split in at least one place, and one of her eyes was swollen shut. Mascara had run black tears down her face and streaked dreadfully when she rubbed at her eye with the cuff of the shirt. The shadows of fingers were already darkening around her throat. She stared down at Simms balefully and I was pleased to see that he looked ashamed of himself.

"Well? What the hell do you want?" she demanded. Her voice was harsh and raspy, and sounded disturbingly similar to Gob's. Simms pressed his lips tightly together.

"The man that Moriarty and Jericho killed—did he try to kill you first?"

Her chin crinkled and her mouth was a wretched taut red bow of misery. It didn't look like she was going to say anything at first, but then her lips curled back from her teeth in a half grimace, half snarl. "I don't think he was choking the shit out of me to win any favors, no."

"I see," he said, nodding sympathetically, not meeting her eyes anymore. "And are you satisfied with the way the matter was resolved?" he asked tentatively.

"He's dead?" Nova asked bluntly.

"Yes."

She spat at the ground and even at the distance I was standing, I could see that it was tinged with blood. "Asshole."

And Nova turned on her heel and limped back up the stairs.

Simms turned to me. "The man's possessions—"

"Yes, yes, will be sold off and given to the offended party."

"To Nova."

"Right," I said, unconcerned. Of course it would go to Nova—whereupon the majority would go to me, if she didn't want to sleep outside. He fixed me with another scowl.

"Got my eye on you, Moriarty."

"Noted," I replied. He took another moment to glare around at us, but the look had lost its considerable power, and he headed out the door, slamming it behind him with a crash.

There was a moment of silence before Jericho said, "Shit, Colin—you could talk the devil into setting himself on fire." This was said with a certain awe and reverence that was almost touching.

"Just had the upper hand this time," I said, massaging my shoulder. I'd probably strained it hauling the Johnnie down the stairs. _I'm getting too old for this sort of nonsense. _

"Still, though. Thought he was gonna shoot us there for a minute."

"Yeah," I said distantly. It had all been so... _easy_. Too easy. The thrill, the high of Getting Away With It had quickly evaporated. I felt troubled again, empty, discontented, uneasy—and all those other words that came close but didn't quite describe that sense of underlying anxiety I'd been feeling ever since that vaultie girl had left.

I left Jericho to his own devises; I had other things to tend to. I grabbed a little jar from the office and headed upstairs to Nova's room. She started at the sight of me, shrinking back, as if I was going to hit her next.

"It wasn't my fault, Colin," she said quickly, ready to bolt.

"I know," I said. She looked up at me incredulously, and flinched when I sat down next to her on the bed. Jesus, that fucker had roughed her up something fierce. I unstopped the little jar, some sort of "miracle ointment" that Doc Hoff had sold me. I didn't know what was in it, but it actually worked well on healing cuts quickly without any scarring or infection. I dipped my fingers into the white paste. "This'll sting a bit."

I smeared the most of the Doc's goop in the places where it counted the most, mainly around her face, but also a savage bite mark below her collarbone after she pulled down the wide neck of the shirt. I left the eye alone; I knew it wouldn't work on busted capillaries. She let me slather on the ointment in silence, endured my touch without protest. Nova looked like she was going to start crying again.

"Did you laugh at him?"

"No. I don't know. I can't even remember anymore." I bet she did; I bet she remembered more than she liked, and that she'd recall it in unguarded moments and in nightmares for years to come. I wasn't going to press it though, not that night.

"You're going to stay put up here, heal up. Gob'll get anything you need."

"What about the money?" Nova asked, knowing it was on my mind. It always was, these days.

"We'll worry about that later."

"I think you saved my life, Colin. Thanks," she said wetly, stared up at me, the corners of her mouth twitching up in the barest approximation of a smile, and a tear coursed it's way down her cheek from her swollen eye. All at once, she reminded me so much of James's kid—lost, hurting and abandoned. Aching.

"_You think I stopped him because I _care_ about you? I was just protecting me investments, is all. Nothing more, nothing less," _I should have said, would have said. I should have gotten up, gotten the hell out of there and given her the cold shoulder, like I would have a week before that Goddamn vaultie had breezed in and changed everything.

So against my better judgment, I laid a hand on Nova's shoulder, squeezing it gently, sympathetically.

"Think nothing of it," I said.

And before I could remove my hand, she launched herself at me, clutched my shirt in her fists and started sobbing. I sat there for a moment, stunned. Not knowing what else to do, I encircled her in my arms around her, tentatively at first, then tighter, and she cried even harder. That close, I could still smell that Wasteland Johnnie on her. I rocked her back and forth in my arms, telling her it'd be alright, sweetie, it'd be alright, it'd all turn out OK in the end. I don't think I convinced anyone, though. It seemed like she could have carried on for hours. She probably would have, too, if I'd let her.

"I need to go back down there," I told her after a while. She mumbled something before uncurling her fists from my shirt and sitting up on the bed, hands clasped in her lap, looking as awkward about what had just happened as I felt. I stood up quickly, setting the jar of ointment on her nightstand.

"I'll send Gob up in a while," I said. I didn't look her in the face. I left before she could say anything or before I could see her face crumple, heading back downstairs. I set thirty caps down on the counter out of the till.

"Gob, go down to Doc Church and see if Moira got that ice maker fixed. Buy some, and don't let him screw you over on the price."

"Yes, sir," Gob said, and I took his place at the bar.

People started to show up out of morbid curiosity, with most of them buying drinks to try and persuade me to share my views on exactly what happened. Some of them hadn't come in months, or had never spent caps at my place before. I gave short, one-word answers, or didn't say anything at all. People gave me a wide berth and nervous looks until Jericho, who couldn't resist a good bit of gossip himself, started confirming our side of things, and then I got approving smiles and unsolicited pats on the back, congratulating me on a job well done and going on about how we should do more to protect ourselves against those goddamn Wastelanders, and we shouldn't even allow them in town, they just use up all the water and take up all the beds in the common house, oh, yes, yes, the prick sure had it coming, sure did, give my condolences to Nova and I do hope the dear girl recovers soon... and on and on and fucking _on_.

I wasn't feeling talkative; I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I wasn't sure why. Normally, I'd take any opportunity to sing my own praises, maybe add a few interesting embellishments or witty comments that made a story fun to pass around, but my heart wasn't in it that night. Things had turned out alright, all things considered. The bar was packed, more crowded than I'd seen in months. Nova would be out of commission for a week or so maybe, but we were getting caps out of most of the town that night and perhaps the next few nights as well, I'd gotten away with what was tantamount to spitting in Simms's hapless face, and I'd probably convinced a few folks that I was perhaps not the scum of the Wasteland toilet bowl—but no one to be trifled with, either.

It all felt so hollow. Meaningless. I should have been pleased; I'd gotten away with murder—how many other people in town could claim the same? And it was a murder, I had no delusions about that. I hadn't needed to kill that Johnnie. I'd known from the moment that I'd wrapped the chord around his balls that he'd bleed to death before anyone could intervene. He was just a drunk that had gotten carried away, and I'd stopped him before he could do Nova any lasting damage (physical damage, at least). I could have just roughed him up, taken all his cash and anything else he'd had of value, sliced off a finger or two, or maybe an ear or the first half-inch of his nose to make sure his lesson stuck, and then sent him on his way. That would have been justice enough, probably.

I snorted to myself. Justice. If there really was any justice in this world, I would have been killed ten times over. It hadn't been the first time I'd killed someone, but there'd been something different about it this time around—or something different with me; perhaps I'm getting sentimental as the years trudge on, and killing someone for profit just didn't have the same appeal anymore. But that wasn't it either, no, no, because a whole Goddamn _list_ of potential targets popped into my head—

—_Grouse's had it coming for twenty years now, anyway, and the last thing I need is him squealing on me—Andy Stahl, that little shit, open up a bar in my goddamn town. Give my help drugs, will he? See how he likes it when I pump enough Psycho up his asshole to make a mutie's heart explode—Simms is useful to have around in a fight, but too damned righteous for his own good, or at least for _my_ good—Jericho's gone if he ever crosses me, or if cirrhosis gets a hold of his liver and he's too useless to serve any other purpose but mirelurk bait—_

Jesus, I needed a drink.

I wondered what James's daughter would have thought of it all, what she might have done. Would she have ran to get the Sheriff, or pitched the bag over the railing herself? Or would she have gotten involved at all, instead opting to just sit back and watch how things played out?

I all but sighed out loud in relief when Gob came back from the clinic. He rushed upstairs with the bucket of ice after I yelled at him to pack it in as much cloth and metal as he could—the shit was worth its weight in gold, practically. I could hear more quiet sobbing over the din of the saloon. After a few minutes, Gob came back with a carefully blank expression on his face, his shirt wrinkled and wet, smudged with mascara. He packed what ice he had left in an old ammo box lined with wet cloth and aluminum and put it in our refrigerator's ice box, then replaced me at the bar.

I brushed off all the curious townsfolk, poured myself a bourbon, plucked up _Heart of Darkness_, took a seat on my bed upstairs, and went on reading my book. After a few minutes I had to stop.

_I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, and the darkness of an impenetrable night..._

"Shit," I breathed, and closed the book, setting it aside. I swung my feet up on the bed and turned off the light, even though it couldn't have been any later then ten o'clock. I listened to the endless parade of voices downstairs and wondered if I carried the any of the bullets that would silence one of them once and for all. I thought of the pure terror in the Wastelander's eyes and the utter loathing in Gob's. I thought of Nova's macabre necklace of bruises and the wet spots on my shirt. I thought of James's daughter_—Audrey, that's the girl's name, Audrey—_and the smooth alabaster column of her throat, her shining raven's wing of hair and the musical quality of her laugh. I thought of the doe-like innocence in her eyes when she came in, and the gathering shadows that had replaced it when she left.

"_Oh, Sir," _her disembodied voice breathed in my ear, and I let out a shaky sigh.

Audrey, that goddamn girl, more trouble than she was worth_—_She'd taken a crowbar and pried a crack open in the armor I'd been pulling up around me ever since I was fourteen. I wished I'd kicked that vaultie out of my saloon the first moment I laid eyes on her, James be damned.


	3. Chapter 3

Thank you Icwer, Kytten, Nythology, Rose Wyrm and Sanima for taking the time to review.

Chapter 3

The girl had made her appearance in mid August—the 16th or 17th, something like that. The heat tends to make the days run together. Gob was at the counter, still straighting up from the night before, Nova was still asleep, and I was taking stock on what we were short of; Doc Hoff was due in a few days, Ahzrukhal's goon shortly thereafter, and I wanted to make sure of what I had and what would need to be bartered for, and what could be spared. Typically, there aren't many customers before noon, so when someone actually came in, I looked up, expecting to see Simms' sour expression, or Moira looking for some tool she'd misplaced or some other damn fool thing, or Leo Stahl scratching his arms nervously, doing his little junkie shuffle and pestering me for chems, even though I'd already told him time and time again that I wouldn't sell him aspirin, let alone Jet.

It was someone new, though, a stranger. And 'strange' was the appropriate term. I was sure I'd never laid eyes on her before, but all the same, she looked weirdly familiar. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, keeping to my inventorying and trying not to look too interested—that's one of the appeals of my establishment, I'd say; none of us ask too many questions and we'll leave you the fuck alone so long as you don't start anything you can't finish. She was dressed in a jumpsuit that looked remarkably clean, paired with a leather jacket. She didn't belong in Megaton, or anywhere else for that matter—it was like she dropped out of the damned sky. The girl blinked and rubbed at her eyes, not used to the dim after the blazing sun.

Her eyes settled on that layabout zombie and she visibly shrunk back but made a good show of not looking too revolted. She certainly did much better than the first time I'd seen a ghoul, but then again, the circumstances had been very, very different.

She had glanced around a little before walking up to the bar and started quietly talking to Gob. After a few moments, the ghoul cast an anxious look in my direction. The kid looked past Gob's shoulder and locked gazes with me.

Couldnt've been more than twenty. I remember thinking of how strange her eyes were; clear and open, completely and utterly guileless. Her face was very pale without even a hint of a sunburn, and she had the longest hair I'd ever seen; black, clean and shinning. She was taller than average too, almost my height; good nutrition as a child must have given her some length of bone. She looked back to the ghoul.

The kid looked more disappointed as the conversation progressed, but I could tell the zombie was ground beef in her hands. That walking corpse'll take quite a beating, but if you give him a word of encouragement now and then and he'll plaster himself to you like shit on a brahmin's ass. I wished I knew what she was saying, because there's nothing like a good bit of gossip, and I'm sure the kid had an interesting tale, but the combo of that damned hissing radio and the overhead exhaust fan meant I could only catch one word in every four.

She looked back at Gob, carrying on about whatever, before saying her thanks and then picked her way towards where I was working.

"Mr. Moriarty?" she inquired.

"Yeah? What the hell do you want?" I wasn't in the mood for my whole 'welcome to my saloon' spiel, at least not that early in the morning.

"I thought perhaps I might speak with you, if you're not terribly busy." She produced her words elegantly; her vowels round, consonants crisp. The soft Washingtonian accent varies from place to place, and you barely notice it after hearing it for a while, but its complete absence from her voice was jarring.

The girl looked_ just so damned familiar_, and then the dots connected in my head and it all fell into place.

"Jesus wept, you're James' girl, aren't you?" The resemblance was even more obvious when her dark eyes glittered and her face split into a grin, her teeth dazzlingly, impossibly white, like in some of the old movie posters and advertisements you could still find around. It was the same smile James had given me when I saw him not a day earlier.

"I am, yes. How did you know?"

"'Cause you're the spiting image of him, lass, don't you know? My, you've grown up since I seen you last."

The grin faded somewhat. "But I've never met you before."

"Well, you were no more than a babe. I guess you wouldn't remember."

The smile vanished, her face turned suddenly deadpan. "That's nonsense. I've never been here before."

"Oh, but you have. You and your pa blew through here nigh on twenty years back. He's quite a memorable fella."

"I was born in Vault 101," the young woman had insisted, "I've never been here before—my father was born there as well."

I couldn't help but let out a harsh bark of laughter. "Oh, that's rich! Did James tell you that? God, the lies we tell to those we love."

The kid looked disquieted. "You're mistaken, sir."

"Are you calling me a liar in my own fucking saloon, woman?"

"No, of course not," she said quickly, "I just find it hard to believe that... it's just that..." She frowned, and the kid was so damned transparent, I could practically see the gears turning in her head. "I was born in the Vault," she said firmly, but I could tell that her conviction had wavered. She was all neat and prim, but rubbed the wrong way, like a cat left out in a dust storm. You could feel the frustration on her, the nervousness, the sadness, the growing desperation—the opportunity to net a few caps.

"And I'm saying that you and your pa came through here with a Brotherhood of Steel escort on your way to the vault after your ma died. I was glad to be rid of you, too—you wouldn't stop squalling for nothing. There's been others through here that's escaped, you and your dad weren't the first and won't be the last. I even remember when the vault was open for a spell, until too many people got themselves killed."

"Killed?"

"There was a raider attack on Megaton back in '44," I said, as blasé as I could manage, "I suppose once the vaulties saw some of the uglier aspects of the Wastes, they bottled up tight again."

She seemed to consider this for a while, then shook her head.

"Sir," she said, still frowning, "We could argue this all day, but..."

"I know, I know, there's more pressing matters at hand, aren't there? Like where your daddy is now."

"Yes," said the kid, and she flashed that winning smile again. "If you could tell me where he went, I would certainly appreciate it. He may need my help."

I chuckled a little at that. Smooth, like her father, but James was the self-effacing sort that could wheedle information without seeming like he was prying. He was a real natural at it; I wish I'd taken notes. But this girl came across as too eager, too green. And the thought of someone like James needing help from someone like this girl was ridiculous. Granted, I didn't know him all that well, but James seemed like a resourceful sort of fellow. He'd been doing just fine long before he'd had that kid. And if he actually got in a spot, this girl—this _child, _practically—was going to be the very last thing that was going to do him any good out here in the real world.

"Nice try, kid. Here's a bit of free advice: smiling and playing nice is only going to get you so far out here. Everything else costs cash. So you can show your appreciation with some caps in my pocket."

The kid's smile wavered. "'Caps?'" she echoed.

"Caps. Yeah. You daft?"

"No," said James' daughter defensively, "I just got out here. Are caps like dollars? Or rations?"

I couldn't help but roll my eyes. "God, you're fucking green. Yes. If you want any help from me, and it'll cost you a hundred caps." She looked dismayed, and I felt a little scrap of something that might have been pity. Her dad was a real class act, but I didn't get where I was by being charitable.

"I don't have a hundred caps," said the kid, "I don't have any caps."

"Should've broke your piggy bank before you left, then," I said. "Then I suppose you and I are at an impasse—what's your name, lass?"

"Audrey," she said. It suited her.

"Audrey, then. Tell you what, you seem like a decent enough sort, so I'll cut you a deal. You do a little errand for me, bring me the caps, and I'll tell you where James headed off to."

I saw a muscle hitch in her jaw, the frustration smoldering in her eyes. She seemed to think of something to say, something less than amiable, but she thought better of it.

"Alright," said the kid cautiously. Good of her to be suspicious. I sure as hell would have been. I explained the situation with Silver, that no good whoring junkie cunt, and she considered it for some time before nodding solemnly.

"Good. Well, better sooner than later, eh?"

"Right," she said, "I'll be back with your money soon, then." She had held out her hand. Her fingers were long and elegant, the nails devoid of grit, the underside of her wrist pearly, so pale that I could see the greenish-blue veins just below the surface. I stared at it, transfixed. She let it hang there for a few moments, before drawing it back.

"Sorry," she said reflexively.

"For what?"

"I just—do people not shake hands when they make a deal out here?"

"Oh," I said, and felt like a complete idiot. I reached down and took her hand, soft and without the slightest trace of a callous. She smiled warmly and held my hand with a grip that was surprisingly firm. We shook, then released. The hair on the back of my neck tingled.

"Well, until we meet again, Mr. Moriarty," she said, then looked to the ghoul, nodding. If she'd been wearing a dress, she might have curtsied. "Gob. A pleasure meeting you as well."

Then she floated out, all lithesome grace. Gob looked after her with naked wantonness. God almighty, a scrap of kindness and the zombie was practically ready to dry hump the kid... well, not that I blamed him, I guess. She was something neither of us had ever seen before, something fresh, new and shiny.

"That's some kinda lady," he said to no one in particular, voice sounding like he was gargling with hot asphalt.

"Huh," I commented, staring at the door for a moment, then: "Were you waiting for the vomit out on the catwalk to clean itself? Get to it before it starts frying and raising a stink."

There was a barely concealed sigh. "Yes, sir."


	4. Chapter 4

A little rushed, maybe a little overlong, but I felt like I needed to post something. Just kinda wanted to get it over with so I could move things along, you know?

And I'm looking for a beta. I think I need one. If you feel up to it, and don't mind hurting my feelings, drop me a line.

Again, thanks for the encouragement—keep that feedback rolling!

----------------------------

Chapter 4

When Audrey came back late that same night, I was already in a foul mood, to say the least.

Nova was upstairs, rolling some yokel, and I suppose I should have been happy for the caps it was going to net, but every now and then I could hear them going at it over the din of the saloon and it just served to remind me how goddamn lonely I was. Good tail only happened through Megaton once in a while and I hadn't had any companionship in some time. And according to Jericho, Nova could suck the sorrow off a recent widow.

As appealing as all that sounded, I'd've sooner fucked Gob. God only knows what Nova slept with (well, Jericho, for one), and I'd already learned my lesson with Silver. The Big One two centuries earlier toasted a lot of things, but I suppose most of the sexually transmitted diseases and infections were just as resilient as the people that survived. Whatever I'd gotten from that whore had been a minor thing, nothing Doc Hoff and an exorbitant amount of money couldn't take care of, but I counted myself lucky not to be dying of syphilis or something.

On top of the blue balls there was the shit with Gob. Gob had dropped a bottle of vodka—a good brand, top shelf, something hard to come by that I should have kept for myself—and got alcohol and broken glass all over the floor.

"You clumsy fucking bastard!" I hissed, and I lifted a hand to smack him but I saw his eyes spark, and what was left of his lips pulled back from his remarkably well-preserved teeth in a snarl that made my hand pause in midair.

"What're you gonna do? Hit me? " he growled, far from cringing and servile, "You think I can't handle it—you think it even fucking phases me anymore? Go ahead and hit me, asshole, because I'll still be around long after someone serves you up to the vultures, you sorry son-of-a-bitch!"

The saloon was dead silent. Even the shrieking bedsprings upstairs ceased.

I stared at him, momentarily stunned, and there...well, there was...Alright, fine, fuck it, I can admit it to myself—I felt the first stirrings of fear. I feared for a moment that he'd really had enough—and I don't mean that he'd had it up to here with my bullshit, but that he'd finally just _snapped_, that whatever barrier there was between intelligent, sentient and still mostly human being and slobbering, frenzied animal had finally started started to erode. For a split second, I thought he'd start trying to rend the flesh from my bones, shrieking in a way that made the sweat on my back turn to ice, all his emotions boiled down to a festering single-minded rage and his thoughts and instincts stripped to _KILL_ and _FEED_.

I stayed calm, resisted the urge to plunge my hand down to the gun on my hip, and stood my ground. I noted a hellish glint in his eyes, and then I knew what I was dealing with.

"You're on Psycho, aren't you?"

His eyes narrowed. "No."

"'Course you are, you think I can't fucking tell?"

The dilated pupils, the increased aggression, the rapid pump of blood through his exposed veins. People were staring at us, silent. I drew close to him, and I could smell the chemicals wafting from his skin, medicinal and acerbic. It was so obvious. He hadn't had a full dose, otherwise things probably would have ended in blood.

There's a reason why I didn't feel it necessary to keep Gob on a collar after I bought him, a reason why I didn't need to hold a gun to his head to make sure he didn't just run off when God knows I'd gave him the opportunity and the motivation.

"Zombie," I said, voice a low growl so that the other people at the bar couldn't hear, "If I catch you on chems again, I'll toss your rotting ass out of here. A word to the caravans and everyone from New York to Charleston will know what happened the _last_ time you were on Psycho. The Regulators will put a price on your head. You'll never have a moment's peace for all the people braying for your blood—you'll have to live underground like a goddamn feral. That is, if you can even make it to the gate; I spill to Simms and he'll lynch you in a fucking heartbeat."

The manic glint in his eyes turned cold with fear, all the muscles in his face slackening. We both knew I'd do it. I've killed more than one man with a single tidbit of nasty, uncomfortable truth.

"We clear?"

He lowered his head. "Yes, sir."

"I thought you were clean. Who did you get that shit from, anyway? I know it wasn't Hoff. Was it Church?"

"Andy gave it to me," he said.

"Just 'gave' it to you? For _nothing_?" The ghoul nodded slowly after some reluctance. "And you just took it?" He sheepishly nodded again.

Andy Stahl. Son of a bitch. It was impossible to tell how much that ambitious little fuck knew and how much he was guessing. It was no secret that the last thing I wanted was my help strung out on chems, but Andy giving a ghoul, Gob in particular, Psycho? For _nothing_? He had to know something. No time to pursue that little notion, though; I'd have to wait.

"Think you can calm down on your own or do we need to go see Church?"

"No, sir. It's wearing off," he said, but the flesh of his neck reddened.

I could have smacked him for good measure, but beating on the help in front of customers is bad for business, makes 'em apprehensive, understandably, and dams up the cap flow. Plus, the last time I'd thumped him one—I don't know what it is, perhaps the heat of summer makes him moult—I'd come away with bits of flesh sticking to the back of my hand. Besides, why waste any energy beating on Gob when he was clearly doing such a good job of it himself? Gob's face was already contorted in anguish, clearly lost in his own miserable thoughts. And he was still on Psycho; hitting him might have strained what little control the little chem monkey did or didn't have.

"That bottle'll come out of your pay. Now clean this shit up!"

"Yes, sir," he went for the broom and started sweeping up the glass and soaking up the vodka, face pointed to the floor.

So when Audrey came back with foul news, I was disappointed, to say the least. I could already tell that something was already different about her—a tarnish of the spark in her eye, maybe, or the way she held herself a little more rigidly, and an almost imperceptible tenseness in her shoulders. More obvious was the nasty sunburn across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.

"What do you mean, already dead?" I snarled at her, and got the queerest feeling of pride and admiration when the kid didn't flinch or back down.

"You heard me. She was dead when I got there," said the young woman, standing her ground. I love people that don't fall over when I push at them a little, another reason why I got along better with Nova than Gob. Audrey paled even further, shuddered and looked nauseous. "If it was the woman you were looking for, there's not much of her left. I think someone...well, she's not going anywhere."

I sighed, tried to force out the aggression, the tension from earlier. Well, couldn't be helped I guessed. There was this old school in Springvale that was known to have raiders camped out there on occasion, so I couldn't say that I was entirely surprised. I've seen first hand what monstrous things raiders do, especially to women. And I _had_ wanted that bitch taught a thing or two even if I hadn't explicitly said as such, but I would have much rather had the caps.

"Sorry, kid. Here, have a seat. You look like you could use a drink."

She sat on a plastic chair across from me and I poured her a tumbler of whiskey. Audrey sipped it experimentally and made the most comically awful face.

"That really shook you up, didn't it, kid? Seeing that."

"It's not as if I've never seen death before," she said, frowning. "When I left, they..."

"They what?" I asked. She took a deep breath and heaved it out again like the weight of the world was on her shoulders.

"After my dad left, the overseer went crazy, for lack of a better word; he armed the guards with live ammo and told them to hunt down and suppress any dissidents. When people heard that the Vault had been opened, some panicked, and a couple went for it. The security guards were jumpy, badly trained; when they saw the Holdens, the guards just started shooting. The Holdens had never caused any sort of problem. They'd lived just down the corridor from us. And the guards just shot them." Her chin quivered and dimpled.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, was that all? She wasn't about to get any sympathy from me. I'd shot and killed a man by the time I was seven years old, and at my father's behest. Childhood in the real world is as brief as it is brutal. Damned vaulties. I could have told her to grow the fuck up already and to get used to death and unpleasantness, because that was all she was going to find outside of the relatively benevolent walls of Megaton.

But, well...she couldn't help it, I supposed, and I tried not resent her for the easy life she'd had. No fault of her own. She was what James had made of her; soft, fragile, pampered and woefully ignorant. She'd never known starvation or disease, or had to bury friends and family murdered by raiders or muties, or washed blood and bits of flesh and bone out of her hair, or had to choose between collecting her own piss or drinking the water that'd boil the brains out of her ears, given enough time...

So, I said, "That's rough, kid. I'm sorry to hear of it."

She gave me a little half-smile. "Listen to me go on; you probably aren't interested in any of this. I'm sure you've heard it all before." She sipped the whiskey again, drank more, grimaced less.

"Kid, you're the most interesting person that's wandered in here all summer; if you want to unload, you go right ahead." She looked tempted, like a shoulder to cry on was just the thing, but I guess she'd had death for one day and promptly changed the subject.

"Things are just so..._different_ out here, aren't they? I mean—less than twenty-four hours ago, I couldn't tell you what a building looked like. I saw photos, of course, but I'd never really...before, it was just a bunch of fuzzy abstract shapes on paper. No dimension to it. Or the _sky._ I mean, my God, it goes on forever, in all directions..." She shook her head, smiling. "Amazing. Utterly amazing. It's like nothing I'd ever seen. I'd never imagined, never even conceived of something so vast. And I've never seen so many people in all my life—how could you ever keep track of anyone around here?"

"Well, we don't, I suppose." I stared at her, bemused. I wasn't used to being a listener. The way she gushed on was not exactly child-like, since most children don't stay children out here long enough to develop any sort of curiosity or enthusiasm for the world, but she just sounded so damned _excited_. She was so new, so fresh, so different from anyone else I'd ever encountered in my long, sordid life. I'd never met anyone like her before, and I didn't imagine I ever would again.

I fancy that she found me just as exotic as I did her. She'd spent nearly her entire life not a mile away, but she may as well have been from a different country—and there I was, Ambassador of the Wasteland, her first real taste of an alien culture. We talked for what seemed like days, but couldn't have been longer than half an hour or so. Gob, the bar, the customers, the paperwork all just sort of evaporated into the background and it was just the two of us. She was brimming with questions. Normally, I hated being treated like a damned computer terminal dictionary, but she was a special case and I found myself not minding, anything just to have an excuse to linger in her company just a little longer.

We talked mostly about things she had seen in her brief foray out in the Wastes; Megaton, animals, landmarks, a little history, what the uses for different buildings might have been, all sorts of things. Things turned to me, eventually ("Your accent is very different from that of the others I've met; are you from somewhere else?"). Her eyes lit up when she discovered I'd been born across the pond ("'Ocean?'" she'd said, running her mouth over the word experimentally, like a man would check a friend's gun. "What's that? Can I see it? Is it nearby?"). Fascinating as she was though, I could feel her questions rubbing away at me, dislodging and grating against the psychological armor I'd built up over a lifetime of back stabbing and deceit. It had to stop.

"Look, kid—"

"Audrey. Everyone insists on calling me 'kid,' for some reason. It gets tiresome."

"Audrey, then—I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm; I think it's lovely and sort of charming—" and she blushed, all at once prettier than Nova and sweet little Lucy West put together by miles, "—but don't get carried away. Or too reckless. It's deadly out here; I think you saw that first hand today."

Her smile wilted and she looked back down at her drink. "Yes. Of course, the woman. It's just—it's just all so overwhelming." Her face tightened with her resolve. "First things first. My father."

"So, what do you have for me?" I asked.

"I didn't find any caps."

"Well, did you come away with anything?"

The kid pulled two bottles of Nuka-Cola out of a tattered rucksack she'd found somewhere, looking apologetic. "This is all I could find that looked like it had any value. There may have been more, but I really didn't want to get too close."

"That's a good start, but not near enough to cover my little nugget of info, lass." Audrey looked crestfallen, her lips bowing down and she looked away, starring at nothing for a minute before meeting my eyes again.

"You could just tell me where he went, you know. You'd loose nothing."

"I could, but I'd also gain nothing. That's not how things work around here; nothings free. This whole place is running on shoe strings—if I don't make a little money on the side, I go under."

It was a piss-poor excuse, but I wasn't exaggerating; I was making less money every year. Booze was getting harder and harder to find, and ever dearer to pay for. They certainly weren't making any more of it, or at least none that wouldn't poison you, anyway. Having a competing establishment in town didn't help and neither did the little poisonous rumors Stahl kept spreading. On top of that, there were the taxes—taxes to keep Stockholm, Jericho and Simms in guns and ammo, taxes to keep the water and electric flowing, taxes to pay for the salvage crews to bring more scrap and sheet metal to reinforce the corroding walls, etc. And influence was expensive to maintain. In another year or two, I expected to go into the red; after that, I might have to re-visit some of Eulogy Jones's offers.

"There must be something I can do," said the young woman, "I'd do anything to find my dad."

"'Anything,' huh?" Audrey's brow beetled and her lips pressed together so tightly that her mouth was nothing but a white scar beneath her nose.

"Yes," she said.

I could've asked her to kill one of the Stahls and sent the rest of the clan packing, or sent her out to the Wastes to see if she could find some replacement bottles of booze of the caliber that Gob busted, but I sincerely doubted she could have done either of those financially feasible deeds without getting herself killed. She was good looking, though. Damned good looking. Pretty. Beautiful, even. And I've always been a sucker for a beautiful face. And it'd been so long since I'd had anything but my own two hands for entertainment. And I wanted, wanted...

Well, I just _wanted_. And at my age, in a place like the Wastes, times like they were, _want_ could justify...well, just about anything.

"Are you sure?" I had asked her again.

"Yes," she said firmly, slender hands drawn into determined fists, but I really didn't think she knew what I was getting at. Or what I wanted to get at.

"Then maybe we can make some sort of alternative arrangement," I said, my voice suggesting more than my words. She blinked and her lips parted. I saw her lips move slightly as she resisted the reflexive 'what?'

"I don't think I follow," she said slowly.

"Oh, come now. You can't be that naive." She raised an eyebrow. "Your dad did give you 'the talk,' didn't he? He is a doctor, after all."

That certainly caught her off-guard.

"Oh. _Oh_. Well, yes, he... but... you," she said, blushing. "I just... you want to... with _me?_" She sounded incredulous, as if the idea of anyone wanting to jump her bones was unthinkable.

"Well, I certainly wouldn't be opposed to the idea."

Audrey stared, gaping at me at a way that certainly didn't speak of her previous decorum. "Is everyone out here as forward as you?" she said, sitting back.

"Commodities are commodities, no matter the package."

"But we just met. We barely know each other at all and you want to... you're completely serious, aren't you?"

"I just said it was an option was all. You could still go rustle up some money; there's plenty of odd jobs around town. Or you can go try to find James yourself, and good luck to you. The sooner you come up with something to trade, the sooner you might catch up to him."

I expected her to protest or look affronted and go on about how she'd do anything with one exception, or storm out and start the impossible task of trying to find her daddy blind. Or cry. That was likelier yet, I thought. But she did none of those things. Actually, she looked a little intrigued. Maybe there was more steel in her than I'd given her credit for. The distant warmth of her smile did not reach her eyes.

"I'll have to think on it, Mr. Moriarty," she said finally.

"You do that. 'Till then, well, you'll know where to find me."

I sulked about in my back room, not getting much done—counting, forgetting what I was counting, swearing, counting again. Checking over my notes and finances, trying to see if there was some sort of cap-netting opportunity I'd missed. Busywork, mostly. I poked my head out a few times, unable to help myself.

Audrey got along with everyone swimmingly. Everyone seemed taken with her, and she flitted from person to person, making pleasantries even with some of the less talkative patrons. One minute she was chatting with Lucy West, who'd looked peaked and anxious all week but brightened and smiled when Audrey had put a reassuring hand over her own. Another stolen glance, and she was sitting at the bar with Billy Creel, who was examining the display of little computer on her arm. He was pointing and jabbering on excitedly while Audrey nodded encouragingly and tapped at the buttons and screen with a rapidity and deftness that could only be gained by years of familiarity. At one point I saw her talking to Gob, her face sympathetic as he bitched and moaned about something or other.

Midnight came and went. I almost didn't want to go back out. I smoked a cigar, gnawed on a bit of iguana and then freeze-dried apples that swam around in my stomach and made me even more nauseous and uncomfortable. I'd spent as much time in the back room as I could stand, so I shut down the terminal and headed back to the bar area, immediately looking for the kid.

Jericho, whom I've never known to be of the charitable sort (unless you count shooting raiders as mercy killings), was sharing a bottle of whiskey with the girl that she mixed with some of the Nuka-Cola. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but he was leaning in, smirking, using that conspiratorial growl and she blushed and giggled like a ditzy... well, teenager. Which seemed odd. I wondered who was playing who. She must have known I was there, but she was making a point of not even glancing in my direction. I stared a few moments more and then looked to the still jittery Gob.

"Make sure Jericho doesn't try to pull any shit over on her," I ordered.

"What do you want me to do if he does?" the ghoul asked the floor.

"Slap him around, stab him, shoot him, whatever—holler for me; what the hell else do you think?" I muttered, "Not that you'd be able to manage much else."

There wasn't much to my room; just one of the less filthy beds, a wardrobe, table, and a chair, no decorations. It was a goddamn hole and I knew it. I felt oddly self conscious about it, but there's really only so much you can do with rusting sheet metal and 200-year-old busted antiques to make it homey. I laid down, staring at the ceiling, waiting, listening. I could hear Nova going at it with that Johnnie to a disgusting detail. They quieted down eventually, but the damage had been done. I was fucking miserable all over again.

I waited. An hour passed. My eyelids drooped. I was jolted awake once or twice by the sound of my own snoring. At two, I gave up, turning off the lantern and rolling over on my side, back to the wall, mind wandering, getting all worked up._ Stupid fucking idea. Of course she wouldn't come up; no one'd be that desperate. Well, fuck her, then. I didn't need her, dumb fucking kid. Too fucking prudish anyway, damned vaultie, stuck up like her shit doesn't stink. Not really my type of girl—cold fish too, probably; the prettiest girls never make much of an effort, just lie back and think of England or some other shit. Whatever. Didn't need her, didn't need _anyone_. But maybe..._

I had almost drifted off for good when I heard something. The door creaked open for a moment and then quietly closed again. I could feel the reassuring weight of the gun at my hip. I was wide awake, eyes slitted open only far enough to feign sleep. The person in question fumbled in the direction of the wardrobe. I sat up quickly, so quickly that it might have startled them, because they took a clumsy step back.

"Mr. Moriarty?" There was an almost imperceptible slur to her voice and I could smell the whiskey and the syrupy soda on her.

"Audrey?" Jesus Christ, I could hardly believe it. Huh. Guess she really _was_ that desperate...

I heard a click and the room was softly illuminated by her pip-boy. She didn't say anything, just shrugged off her leather jacket and let it fall to the floor, then unzipped the jumpsuit, letting it fall to the floor as well.

"What are you doing?"

"What does it look like?" she replied, bending down to undo her laces.

Boots, tank top, shorts; everything came off but that little arm computer. Audrey kicked her clothes off into the corner and gazed at me, unabashed, not nearly as awkwardly as I would have thought—I imagine the whiskey helped. She was exquisite, perfect, all long limbs and soft curves, a body that had never known violence, starvation or disease. I stared at her in slack-jawed wonder.

"You're here, then."

"Yes."

"Which means—"

"Can I make one addendum?"

"A what?"

"A deal."

"Shoot."

"Can we do it as if...as if it's not just a transaction?" She smiled in a way that was completely and utterly endearing.

"If you're eager, anything is possible."

"Well, then—down to business?"

And I couldn't help but laugh.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Gob skirted around me the whole morning. Whenever I caught him staring at me, he looked back to the floor or started aggressively cleaning the counter of the bar; some parts of the metal were quickly gaining a mirror shine. I could have said something snide but I was thoroughly exhausted. Nova was less discrete.

"God, Colin, could you keep it down next time? My Johnnie almost left early last night."

"What are you on about?"

Her voice was monotone. "'Oh, sir. Sir, yes. God, please, please.' It just got a little old, that's all. And could you pull your bed away from the wall next time?" If Gob had had enough living flesh, his whole face would have probably flushed scarlet, but neither of us paid his cringing any mind.

"You just stay out of me fucking business, Nova."

"_Your_ fucking business interrupted _my_ fucking business—which makes your business my business."

"What's ruffled your feathers? Are you worried about me replacing you? Jealous, maybe?"

_'Cause, baby, you _should_ be_.

She snorted inelegantly and mumbled something about wanting to keep her "clientèle" a little longer to get repeat visits, then went back to sauntering around the bar and picking up stray cigarette butts from the night before.

_Oh, sir. _Audrey's voice echoed in my head, breathless and amazed, and dug into my guts like a fucking hook. It occurred to me that I should have been in a better mood, all things considered. I'd been gentle with the kid, taken things sweet and slow, done some things out of courtesy that I might not normally bothered with—but it'd been so long since I'd danced with anyone that I'd wanted to make sure I remembered all the steps. The kid was a quick study, and It'd been the most physically satisfying tumble in a long, _long_ time.

But it felt like something was lacking. Something had gone wrong, somehow. I'd rested my head between her perfect breasts, panting like I'd run for miles, feeling all weak and rubbery, luxuriating in the sound of her slowing heartbeat, when Audrey spoke:

"My father," the kid had gasped, out of breath herself.

If there'd been any afterglow, the mention of James effectively doused it. Christ, I'd just fucked James' daughter—a girl that was young enough to be my own daughter, if things had worked out differently. I got off her, away from her, rolling over on my side.

"Galaxy News Radio, downtown, to talk to that loudmouth DJ, Three Dog. At least, that's where I told him to go."

And she'd gotten up without another word, gathered her clothes in the dark and headed out the door stark naked without so much as a backwards glance. I'd listened to her get her things back on downstairs before heading out the bar door and latching it behind her. I'd laid on my back starring into nothing for a long time, feeling... I don't know. Should have been pleased that she hadn't been clingy and needy, that she'd left me as soon as she did, but I wasn't.

Uncommonly, unexpectedly, I felt like a piece of shit.

I've done a lot of things that I'm not particularly proud of, mostly in the name of turning a profit, but I've regretted very little of it. I've made many a person give up something valuable for something as simple as information, and I'd taken their money and goods hand over fist without the slightest twinge of regret. It hadn't been the first time I'd traded with women for sex either (and some men, if they were comely enough), and I doubted Audrey would be the last.

But the last night... making some lost, innocent, doe-eyed girl sleep with me? Out of desperation to find her father? A new low in an already fathomless trench. I could have at least compensated her better, made the transaction a little less one sided. I could have given her one of my shotguns, which would have served her better than the toy she was packing. I could have given her a few Stimpaks, or some Rad-X, something that would have given her a better chance of surviving out there...

Images ran unbidden and unwanted through my head. Audrey, crushed to death in some building or tunnel that finally decided to give up the ghost. Audrey, tripping and falling, breaking her ankle, getting her foot stuck somewhere out in the Wastes and making her a sitting duck for the mirelucks, scorps and slavers. Audrey, ripped limb from limb in some beshitting tunnel under D.C. by slavering feral ghouls lusting for human flesh. Audrey, screaming, raiders taking turns raping every hole God put in her slender frame, slashing her open from navel to nave while tears and blood streamed down her face—

I caught Gob staring at me dispassionately out of the corner of my eye.

"You got something to bitch about, too?" I seethed. I'd take any distraction from my own fucking thoughts. He muttered something. "What was that?"

"I was just wondering if you were feeling alright, sir." There was an almost imperceptible note of contempt in his gravely voice.

No, I was not alright. Far from it, in fact, but instead I said, "Peachy. Shut it, Gobshite, and get back to work."

"Yes, sir," he said automatically, but sounded unconvinced. Gob was concerned for me—no, no, not that, something else that might have been worse: pity. There was no kindness in it though; it was the kind of sympathy I might have given to a Wastelander outside of town. Sure, I'd toss him a cap or two to keep myself in the category of Semi-Decent Human Being, but I wouldn't linger. For one, because misery and bad luck is airborne and contagious. For two, I move on because of the disdain and lack of empathy for something so loathsome as a man reduced to begging. _That's_ what I got from Gob.

"I'm just tired is all," I said, "make us some coffee. And get out a little of that sugar."

The ghoul did a double take. "Sugar? For the both of us?" He sounded so Goddamn hopeful, and a dozen things that I could have said to crush something as audacious as hope in a ghoul came to the forefront of my mind... but I just sighed, cradling my head in my hand. It wasn't profitable to be an asshole all of the time. A little luxury once and a while keeps the help honest and motivated, more often than not.

"Sure, why not," I said.

"Yes, sir!" he said with unusual enthusiasm and put some purified water on to boil and shuffled around, looking for the French press.

_Oh, yes, sir..._

Aw, fuck.

Just business. Nothing more, nothing less, and I did my best to just let it go. But all that was easier said than done. Work. That'd help, something to take my mind off of things—get bogged down in inventorying, or some other mindless, repetitive task, or see about getting some holes patched in the roof and walls before the inevitable dust storm, or maybe go pay Moira a visit, see if she had anything interesting...

"I'll be in the back," I said.

I hadn't gotten more than two steps in the office door when the hair rose on the back of my arms. The computer terminal was open and on, the chair askew, all my private files in full display for anyone that cared to take a casual glance.

_"Goddamnit!"_ I spat and rushed over. I poured over the green lettering, my own words, _"So, out of no where, James came back to Megaton..."_ The blood drained from my face. "Who the fuck—?"

The girl. Audrey. It had to be her, who else could it have been? Way she tinkered with that thing on her arm, hacking my computer would be child's play to her. Knew I should have put a better password on the bastard.

I checked the access time on the file on James and stepped back through the rest of my files. The log on James was the only one that had been accessed recently—not long after I'd headed upstairs, in fact. I sat back, stunned. I didn't know what to think. She'd followed me upstairs after she'd already got the info on her dad? So... so, what, she'd slept with me _just for the hell of it?_

"Sir, your coff—"

"Did you see that little bitch head back here?"

Little muscles in ghoul's brow tugged into a perplexed look.

"Which little bitch, when?" he asked with a touch of exasperation.

"Don't get fucking cute with me."

"Audrey?" he asked. "I don't recall... no, no, Id've spotted her. I stayed near the register all night."

I glared at him, not speaking. He shifted uncomfortably, the coffee cup tinkling a little on its saucer. I don't know if he was aware of it, but Gob started blinking and what's left of the skin of his neck flushed when he knew he was telling a lie. You notice little things like that, you spend more than fifteen years in a thing's company.

"Come to think of it, she did step outside for a moment," he admitted. His skin remained pale, gaze steady.

I reached over and tested the back door. It was still locked, but it felt off. Perhaps she'd sneaked in the back. So, hacker and lock picker; maybe she wasn't as dew-eyed and innocent as I'd made her out to be.

The front door of the saloon squeaked open and Gob looked back over his shoulder. "Billy. I'd better go tend to him, sir."

"Sure, whatever." I took the coffee from him and he headed out to greet Creel.

Anything else? Anything else out of place? The cabinet in my office stood unlocked. There was a spare ashtray, some old paper work, some railroad spikes I used when nails just wouldn't do the job, pencils... but missing were about forty caps, a whole fucking _carton_ of cigarettes, and my knife. The knife struck me the hardest. It'd been my pa's knife, and his father's, and his father's, going back at least five generations of Moriartys. A big damned combat knife with a carved, polished handle, inlaid with silver. Not worth much caps, not like a gun, but it'd had tremendous sentimental value.

It was a little dismaying, actually. I'd talked to the kid, chatted with her for the better part of an hour while she'd practically told me her life story, and I'd even fucking slept with her... and yet it was obvious that I didn't know her at all.

After a few minutes of siting in the office, silently fuming, I began to chuckle. Only a little at first, barely a noise at all, but it grew and grew into a roar of a laugh that reverberated off the walls of the suffocatingly tiny room. There was no sense to it—it was all I could do, I was helpless to do anything else. I laughed 'til I flicked tears from my eyes and my sides ached dully.

That girl. That fucking _woman—_she was either the stupidest bitch that ever walked the Wastes, or the most fearless. The two often went hand-in-hand. Probably had the biggest pair of brass balls that I'd seen in quite some time. She had to have known that I'd notice the computer, that I'd miss the caps and most certainly the knife, and that she'd likely have to come back to Megaton eventually—whereupon I could beat her black and blue, as was my right—and she just went right ahead and did it anyway. I don't think I could have done it, knowing the stakes. Break in, rob me, sleep with me, leave without so much as a backwards glance. God, the sheer _nerve_ of her...

And the thing, the fucking clincher of the whole situation was that I just couldn't _wait_ to see her again.

Finally, I noticed Creel just standing there near the open door, slack-jawed. Wonderful. The whole fucking town was going to think I'd finally turned into a raving lunatic.

"Hey there, Billy," I said, trying to control myself.

"Colin, you... feeling alright? Now I _know_ you ain't been drinking this early." Admittedly, I was feeling much better than I had only minutes earlier. Tense, baffled, hurt and angry, but better somehow. I shook my head, still chuckling.

"Fine. Fine, just... just an interesting... never mind. What do you need?" Creel held up the thick, leather-bound ledger that he used to record his caravan dealings.

"Something ain't right, and I can't figure out what. Just been bugging the hell out of me. Think maybe you could take a look at it?"

Busy work. Right. That'd help.

"Sure, pull up a chair. Gob! More coffee! Now, let's see if we can't turn a profit..."


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Alright, so the fic has gotten to the point where I can't thank everyone by name, but I really do appreciate the reviews and feedback I've gotten from everyone. Also, the offers to be a beta reader. Ultimately, I picked Kimmae, since I'm fond of her writing, her knowledge of the Fallout universe (that she employs very effectively in her own fics) and her keen eye for punctuation, spelling, and grammar. If you're a regular visitor to the Fallout fics and you haven't read any of her stories—then shame on you!

I tend not to like making up extra NCPs, so I borrowed one from outside Megaton. Rory MacLaren is a minor NCP that can be found in Paradise Falls during the "Escape from Paradise" quest. He has no apparent back story, so I thought I'd transplant him for a bit.

* * *

Chapter 6

"I'd like to buy that lot from you," Rory MacLaren said.

"And I'd like to eat my crab cake in peace without anyone fucking with me, but that doesn't seem likely to you, does it?"

It'd been one of those days again. Doc Hoff was late with the shipment. Nova was "on sabbatical" 'till she healed up, since no one was going to pay any decent amount of money to sleep with a beat-up whore. I'd had to forcibly remove Jericho from the bar after he'd chucked a busted whiskey bottle at Gob. Then I got shit from Simms (who was still brimming with self-righteous indignation for killing that Wasteland Johnnie) for tossing that stupid bastard out when he was still sober enough to stand up straight, pick a fight and bloody up some settler. Gob'd cut his hands up something terrible trying to block the broken glass, so I'd sent him upstairs with some severely irradiated water to heal up with.

So I was left downstairs, long past when I normally would have turned in for the night. It was slow evening, which was both a blessing and a curse. There was practically no one to bother me and I'd eaten most of my dinner alone before MacLaren sidled up to me, but that also meant there were less caps to take in, and in my boredom and frustration I'd been drinking most of the profit. MacLaren and I were the only ones downstairs.

MacLaren wasn't put off that easily. "I'm serious, Colin."

I looked him over. His clothes were as crudely cut as when he'd arrived in Megaton, his hair so dirty I couldn't even discern the natural color, and grit seemed to be permanently etched into the creases around his eyes. He'd probably been working on his shack all week.

"Really?" I asked.

"Really."

"I assume we're talking about my property that you're renting."

"Yeah."

"Down by the bomb."

"Yeah."

"And you think you have sufficient capital for this little venture?"

"I do."

"Even though you don't know the price?"

"I... well, it _is_ for sale, right? If I knew how much, I could come back and maybe we could make some kinda deal."

I took a sip of whiskey, rolled it around on my tongue, swallowed.

"How much did he offer you?" I asked MacLaren.

"What?"

"I didn't stutter—don't you dare make me repeat myself."

"Don't know what you're talking about. 'He' who?"

"Lie to my fucking face once more and you'll be scooping your teeth up out of the dirt, MacLaren."

"Andy Stahl, Col—Mr. Moriarty. Sir," said MacLaren, shrinking back. "He said he'd buy the building from me, if he could get the land."

I owned a couple of properties: my saloon, Jericho's place, the Common House, and the lot next to the bomb—which also had the distinction of being close to the Brass Lantern. Not the shack that sat on it, though; that was all what MacLaren had scraped up in the last couple of months that he'd been renting from me.

"Fetch me Stahl. Now."

"But don't you think he'd be asleep? It's kind of late—"

"You tell him if he wants to make any sort of deal with me, he's to do it tonight, or never." He hesitated. "_Now_, MacLaren, or you and your shit is out on the street," I growled.

He dutifully shut his mouth and rushed out. I shoveled the rest of my dinner and poured another whiskey, which, all things considered, was not an especially good choice. Alcohol has an unfortunate tendency to loosen my tongue, and increases the desire to stir some shit when it really would have been more prudent to keep my mouth shut—a serious flaw when trying to conduct business with any amount of tact.

Two men entered the bar. Both were redheads, both favored with good looks, but you'd be hard pressed to find two brothers with such polar opposite personalities. Andy was ambitious, industrious, a competent businessman—and a complete fucking asshole. He reminded me of myself at that age, with the exception that our common virtues weren't wrapped up in any charm, in his case. As for Leo... he was a junkie. Well mannered, friendly, but you couldn't trust a thing he did or said. The shit he tried to pull with Nova was still fresh in my mind. Leo found a particular spot on the floor worth his full attention while Andy rounded on me.

"Moriarty," said Andy, clipped and frosty. The left side of his face was still red and criss-crossed with the impression of mattress ticking.

"Misters Stahl," I replied cordially, not allowing any of the loathing I felt for Andy seep into my voice. "'Evening to yea both."

I could see the barely restrained hate smoldering in Andy's eyes and in the tense, ram-rod straight way he held himself. I don't know what I ever did to Andy or his kin, but Stahls—like Moriartys—hang on to grudges like starving dogs in it for the kill, and Andy was no exception. Leo stood behind him, pale and shrunken in comparison. Both were unarmed. Leo nodded politely. Andy's mouth tightened and he jerked his chin up.

"Likewise," Andy answered.

"Whiskey? Brandy? Half-priced poon?"

"Business," said Andy.

"Then won't yea have a seat, gentlemen? Take a load off." I gestured to the stools at the bar. Andy hesitated for a moment before sitting down so stiffly that you'd think the seat was made of brick. Leo slumped onto the stool closest to him.

"I see you brought Leo, Andy."

"He wanted to come, since this concerns the family."

"Ah. Is little Jenny not family, then?"

"She's asleep. We usually close up around midnight. Now, I think—"

"Hang on. There's something we need to get out of the way, first off, before we can come to any sort of arrangement." His lip twitched as he barely restrained a sneer at the interruption, but he let me continue. "You getting into the chem trade, or just handing out free samples?"

"I don't deal in that shit, no. Why?"

"Gob was in here all hopped up on Psycho the other day. He said he got it from you."

"Some customer must have dropped it and left it at the bar. I found it under a table. Doc Church said he didn't have a need for it, and Gob was there on an ice run. He asked for it instead, saying he'd save me the trip to the garbage pit. It's none of my business what he did with it."

"That so? And if I ask Church about this little encounter, he'll back you up?"

"Since it's what happened, yeah, I'd say so."

I searched for the artifice in his voice, in his eyes, in the way he smelled... and found none. Which either meant that he was a good liar and he'd been making some inquiries of his own, or he genuinely hadn't been trying to slight me in some underhanded way. I looked at Leo Stahl; his ears had reddened.

"Fair enough," I said. "We'll speak no more about it." That didn't mean I was about to forgive and forget, though. Far from it.

"We're all busy men, so I'm gonna be brief," Andy said without preamble. "I want the lot next to the Brass Lantern."

"Well, I don't know if I want you to have it."

"You're not doing anything with it. Hell, it's sat empty for as long as you've owned it, 'till MacLaren put up that shack."

"And he's done a fine job of constructing that eyesore, and of paying his rent on time."

"I'd like to buy that property," he reiterated more firmly through gritted teeth.

"And do what with it?"

"What does it matter what I do with it? It'd be mine."

"Right. Yours. Yours to expand. Yours to put up some hostel. Yours to open a gambling parlor or a whore house or another bar and try to put me out of business?"

"I never said I was going to open another business on it."

"No, but you would, soon as you were able."

"Free trade—it's the way of the world."

"Not in my town, it ain't. And not on my lot."

Andy glared at me. He looked like a man that was on the brink of screaming something exceedingly nasty, but he wisely stood up, took a step back and looked to his brother.

"Leo, you deal with him." He stalked out of the saloon, slamming the door behind him, leaving Leo with me. Leo was pale, sweating even though it was a relatively cool evening. He shifted uncomfortably and his fingers drummed and twitched restlessly on the counter. He gave me a wan smile.

"Colin. How's it going?"

"Same shit, different day. Its been better. But I'd hedge my bets and say it's been going better for me than it has been for you."

"Yeah, the going's pretty rough lately, you're right about that." He stared hard at me, throat working.

"Yes. Well, about this business with the lot—"

"Look, I'm—I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm hurting real bad, Mr. Moriarty. That's kinda why I came with Andy—"

"—Aww, Jesus fucking Christ, here we go—"

"—Moira's got nothing leftover from whatever crazy experiment she's been working on, and Church is heartless, says 'withdraw isn't an emergency'. Like he'd know."

"Why not ask him to clean you up?"

"Can't afford the rates—and he wouldn't do it, besides. Thinks I'd just go get fucked up again right after."

"Would you?"

"I don't know. I don't know... yeah, probably, if I had any money left over. Shit, I think I'm gonna lose my goddamn mind if I don't get _something_...."

There's _wanting_, and then there's _needing_. Wanting and going without just makes someone merely miserable, but It's a hell of a thing to need something out here. It's a death sentence, in some cases. And Leo needed badly.

"I've told you time and time again, I'll not take any amount of caps from you for chems."

"I've got other things to trade besides caps."

_Déjà fucking vu._"Oh, do you now?" Ever the opportunist, my curiosity was piqued.

"I can work—I got the Brass Lantern brushed up pretty nice, even decorated a bit. I could do the same for you."

"I've got Gob to clean. And I've seen what you call decorating. All those lights—like putting glitter on a puss-filled sore. What else have you got? Go on, tempt me with your favors."

He stared at me, hands clenching each other so hard the fingers were white, his breathing harshened by the second. I could practically hear what was going on in his head, behind his widened eyes, a little voice chanting, faster and faster: _I will not scratch at my arms, I will not scratch my arms, I willnotscratchmyarms I WILL NOT—_

"I could... well, you know," Leo said.

So, it had come down to that again. I took his meaning, but I was going to drag the words out of him with a fucking hook, if I could.

"I don't, really," I said with a nasty smirk. "Don't be coy. Say what you're about, and in no uncertain terms."

"I'd let you do whatever you'd want."

"No. Still not taking your meaning. Could you be more specific?"

He said something softly, barely more than a murmur, face and ears reddening.

"Sorry, I didn't catch that. Speak up." It was really too much.

"I'd let you fuck me," he said, a little louder, and probably prayed to God, or Atom, or the little green men from Mars or whatever hell else there was to pray to that no one had heard him but me. His face burned scarlet. His nails raked the crooks of his arms, making long red welts on his pale, freckled skin.

"Not interested," I said. His chin wobbled.

"Bullshit! I know you sleep with men!" he hissed, eyes darting back and forth to confirm that we were the only ones in the room.

"It's been known to happen from time to time. But I don't sleep with whores or junkies—and I think you might be both."

Leo was shaking. He couldn't have helped it if he'd wanted to. His eyes glittered with unshed tears.

"Mr. Moriarty... Sir, _please,_" he half whispered, half whimpered, leaving me feeling more and more disgusted, both with him and with myself for pushing him so far, letting him bring himself so low. "Just... just this once. Just once. And I'll never ask you for anything ever again—"

"Jesus wept, would you just fucking listen to yourself?" I sighed, then reached into one of my pockets. I took out a brown bottle of Buffout that I turned to on occasion, just when I needed a little extra staying power for some late nights. The bottle glittered in the dim light. Leo was riveted. He had eyes only for it. I rattled it and his breathing stopped.

"There's three left," I said, and tossed it to him. Leo fumbled in the air but managed to catch it. He all but ripped the cap off and threw back the pills and dry-swallowed them so I couldn't have the chance to take them away and tease him with them.

Leo sighed a moment later and then slumped on the stool, boneless, and laid his head down on the bar top. It couldn't have worked that fast, and Buffout had sure as hell never made me feel so relaxed, leading me to think that Leo's addiction was as chemical as it was psychological.

"God. Oh, God, thanks a million, Mr. Moriarty. I really, _really_ needed that," he sighed.

"Business," I reminded him.

"Oh. Oh, right," he said, rising to his elbows and lifting his head from the metal. "What were we talking about?"

"Five hundred a month 'til this time next year. And if I approve of how things are going, you have the place. But I still retain eminent domain rights."

"I don't think Andy's going to go for that," Leo said, unsure, obviously not having a clue as to what I was talking about.

"Well then, Andy's going to have to come up with a better deal—and present it in such a fashion that doesn't involve him acting like a raging cunt, won't he?"

"Sure, sure." He stood up, wobbling a little. "Before I fetch him, do you want me to, uh... pay you back?"

"Here? _Now?_"

"We could go into your office for a bit." He didn't even blush. Junkies. Christ.

"No, we'll work something out later in the week, maybe."

"Well, I'll just go get Andy, then."

He disappeared outside. Shortly thereafter, I heard their muffled arguing. I finished my glass of whiskey and then poured myself another.

"I don't think I'd rile Andy, sir; he's seemed awfully testy, lately," said a gravelly voice from above, making me jump. I looked up. Gob was leaning against the railing on his elbows, his bandaged hands dangling, blood still blossoming on the rags. I wondered how long he'd been eavesdropping.

"When I want your fucking opinion, zombie—I'll beat it out of you!" I growled.

"Sorry, sir," he said and straightened up, looking to make a hasty getaway before I decided to launch the second bottle of the evening at him.

Still, though, info was info. "Hold up. Testy how?"

He looked to the saloon door, then back to me, leaning down, voice barely audible. "Yesterday he apparently didn't like the way Jericho was looking at his sister and he pulled out his knife and started waving it around and screaming at Jericho. Simms swooped in and hauled him away; threatened to knock some sense into him. He didn't take well to that."

"Huh. Why the attitude, do you suppose?"

Gob's eyes glittered in the darkness. "He's missing some money—a lot of it. Someone snuck into his office, hacked his terminal, and looted the floor safe."

"Hacked computer. Robbed. No witnesses... sounds awfully familiar; you think our little vaultie paid him a visit, too?"

"If I were a betting man, I'd put caps on it. But Andy thinks you had something to do with it."

"Why?"

"He blames you for everything from the dust storms, to the shitty lot he's on, to the rads in his noodles."

I sipped at my whiskey to mask my surprise. "How do know know all this shit?"

He shrugged. "When people think so little of you, they tend not to realize you're there at all, and say things that probably ought to have been kept to themselves."

I stared at him, not saying anything for a moment, wondering, as I had so many times before—in and between fairly long periods of not giving a shit—what the hell went on inside that rotting, zombie head of his? I had to chuckle.

"I've heard heavy exposure to rads'll make someone grow an extra toe, but never have I heard of someone growing a new set of balls."

"I... " He looked bemused. "I... uh, thanks, sir."

"Keep your ears open."

I heard the door latch and I jerked my head at the ghoul. He quickly and quietly padded out of view, but not out of hearing range, as the door swung open. Andy came back in, fuming, with Leo trailing behind him as if on a string, looking dreamily detached from the entire situation.

"'Eminent domain?'" he sneered.

I took a sip from my glass. "That's right."

"What the hell does that even mean?"

"It means that if I have reason to, I can arrange to take back the property at fair market value."

"And under what circumstances would you... exercise these rights?" He was really struggling to retain some composure. I loved it. I wondered at what point he would realize that I had just hauled his ass out of bed, marched him all the way to the other side of town, up all those catwalks in the middle of the night—just to fuck with him. And when he'd realize that I'd never had any intentions of selling the lot to him, not at any price—or at least, not without a high disadvantage...

"If I feel that there's a conflict of interests."

"Uh huh. So—so if anyone on that property pours a drink, pays a whore, or rents a room—or if the fuckin' toilet paper is hung the wrong way, or there aren't doilies on the armrests, or we paint the walls chartreuse, or whatever other little fuckin' thing you can think up that you don't approve of, you get to strip the land out from under us for a pittance, take the title back and keep all our money? How is _that—_"

He pounded the counter with his fist.

"—Fucking—"

Twice.

"—Fair?" he seethed, striking metal for a third crash, eyes blazing, lips pulled back from his teeth.

"Not a tone I'd use if I were trying to broker a deal, boy," I warned him in a growl.

And that was apparently Andy's breaking point, where the evening went from mildly awful to utterly catastrophic.

"I am no man's _boy_, you fuckin' fossil!" he snarled.

"Andy, don't_—" _started Leo, blinking, struggling to rise from his chem-addled stupor at the venom in Andy's voice, but he was ignored by the both of us.

"Where the fuck do you get off, coming into _my_ joint and talking to _me_ like that, you uppity little shit-kicker?" I shot back, "I make you a sensible proposal and you respond by insulting me in my own fucking saloon!"

"Yeah, well, here's my counter to your proposal—keep your goddamn property! I hope someone buries you on it!"

"And here's my counter offer to your counter offer—go fuck yourself! Get _out!_"

"Get _fucked_, you miserly old cocksucker!"

He backed towards the door. And here I should have let them go, but I couldn't resist one final parting jab. I was far more giddy than angry—there's little anyone can say to me that really pushes my buttons. Christ, but I love baiting people. It was all I could do to keep from smiling.

"Speaking of fucking and cocksuckers, you might want to see to your brother—since he was _this_ fucking close to crawling behind the bar _and polishing my knob_ FOR AS LITTLE AS _BUFFOUT!_" I bellowed at him, loud enough to wake the dead—or at least everyone in earshot.

Andy was faster than I was—me being half-way drunk, and he being twenty-five years my junior. He launched himself over the counter, fists flying—I only just managed to catch him, a quick rabbit punch to the face, blood exploding under my fist, a crack of cartilage, a howl of pain and rage before he tried for my throat, got one and a half hands around my jugular before he recoiled, fended off after I boxed both his ears. I was glad he'd thrown the first punch, because I'd just been itching to beat the shit out of him ever since he opened that restaurant.

He was a shitty fighter; sloppy, poorly coordinated—he may have had youth, but I had more than thirty-five years of laying out drunks and bare-knuckle fighting, which I could do drunk or sober. What did hit me I shrugged off, and gave back twice as hard as I got. He hesitated at one point and I got a hand in his shirt and flung him to the ground on his ass. He hit his head on one of the cabinet doors and I saw it register in his eyes at the impact, the fear in his eyes, the realization that he was way in over his fucking head. I moved closer, ready to stomp him on a bit before I let him crawl back to that shit-hole he called a bar_—_

"_Andy, no—!"_

"—_Jesus, _Colin, he's got a kni—!"

A flash of silver in the dim room from his boot and a lance of white hot pain high on my right thigh. He might have been going for my stomach, I wasn't sure—if he had, he might have killed me outright—I staggered back, gritting my teeth. My gun was automatically in hand when I looked back up. Leo had his brother under the armpits, hauling him towards the door, Andy kicking and screaming, covered in blood and bruises, blood-flecked spittle flying—

"_Bazdard broke m' mudderfuggin' noze! You lebbe go, Leo, you sonobabidge!"_

"Andy, just shut up, just_—_Shut! _Up!_" Leo yelled back, dragging his writhing brother, the feat no doubt aided by the Buffout.

"Get him the fuck out of here before I shoot him in the gut!" I yelled, staggering back against a shelf, aiming with one hand, the other trembling and gingerly touching the knife lodged hilt deep in my thigh.

Gob got the door, flinging it open as the two staggered out. There was silence but for my ragged breathing.

I slid to the floor with a groan.

"Jesus, Colin, you're really bleeding." I looked up. Nova was standing at the landing, barefoot, wearing the baggy dress that she donned when she wasn't working. Her face was pale beneath the bruises. I looked down. Blood was gushing up from around the knife—not so much that a major artery had been hit, but perhaps one had been nicked. I stared with detached interest, as if it were someone else's vital fluid darkening the sheet metal.

"Shit," was all I could manage.

"I'll go get the Doc," said Gob, "before the Stahls get the same idea." He dashed out, door bouncing off the wall of the saloon as he bolted.

I leaned my head back against the shelf, trying to fend off the disorienting way the room had started to swirl.

"Nova, come pull out this knife," I ordered. "I don't think I'll be able to do it myself.

She looked uncertain. "I don't know if I can."

"You'd rather me bleed to death on the fucking floor, then? Wait, don't answer that—just get over here."

Nova knelt on the floor next to me, grimacing at the sight of my leg. "It's gonna to hurt like all hell, Colin—"

"You're acting like it's the first time I've ever been stabbed. Can't put any pressure on it with the knife still in me—"

"Let me finish!" she hissed, narrowing her eyes, which were an extremely pretty blue, even edged with purple bruises, such a pretty color of blue, pretty... pretty—_Jesus_, I was really loosing it... "It's gonna hurt like hell, Colin, and if you fuckin' _hit_ me for doing what you told me to do, and I swear to God, I _will_ let you bleed to death!"

I could have made some scathing remark about a whore dictating terms to her pimp, but it was all I could do to form coherent sentences at that point. I let the gun fall out of my grasp, then I shoved my hands in my pockets, griping the fabric.

"On three, then?" I asked.

"Sure."

I counted, "One—"

And then Nova yanked out the knife as fast as she possibly could. I probably made her go deaf in at least one ear with the scream—it took all of the willpower I had left not to reflexively strike her. She leaned over, grabbed a clean bar towel and I had to grab on to the shelf behind me to keep from strangling her as she threw all her body weight onto the compress.

"What the fuck happened to 'two?'" I demanded, panting and hoarse.

"You would've tensed up and made it worse," she replied in the matter-of-fact way that mothers use to brow-beat their brats. The ceiling was getting awfully indistinct and cloud-like.

"I think I'm gonna pass out soon," I informed her.

"You can do that. I hear Doc and Gob running up the catwalk; Doc's already cussing you."

"Oh," I said faintly, then said, "If I shit myself when I'm out cold, I hope you'll spare me the indignity of telling me about it later."

"Aw, sugar, you know I'd never do you like that," she said, slipping into her best husky bedroom voice.

"Thanks, Nova dear." Her face loomed over mine. I could just make out her weary smile.

"Anytime, Colin."

I heard two sets of heavy boots on the catwalk outside but the world had gone to blurry to recognize individual forms.

"What the hell happened in here?" I heard Doc Church demand, sounding disgusted. I could hear the rattle of his med kit as he set it down near me.

"Not much. Just a semi-dishonest brawl between folk. Gob?" A shadow moved closer.

"Yes, sir?" he rasped.

"Last thing I need is to be bleeding out the asshole as well as me leg. Don't let him overcharge me."

"Yes, sir," said Gob, and I thought I detected a little amusement in his voice.

"Now's a hell of a time to be a cheap fuck," grumbled Church, rummaging through his kit. "Get me out of bed at three in the fuckin' morning—I _ought_ to take the payment out of his ass, miserable bastard..."

He got the miserable right. I gave up and closed my eyes, giving into the gray blanket that was overtaking all my remaining senses. My last thought, before surrendering completely, was:

Andy. Fucking. Stahl. He'll get his—I'll make sure of it.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

From what I've gathered from the old magazines and newspapers that you can still get if you have the caps, and the gossip from caravaners, things hadn't changed much in the greater DC metropolitan area since the War. One still stood a very good chance of getting shot, stabbed or raped if they wandered into South East or Wheaton. The Potomac and Anacostia Rivers still had the dubious honors of being highly polluted, litter-strewn cesspools. Tourist traps were still filled with irritating, foul-mouthed children. Elitist yuppie assholes still infested parts of Northern Virginia. And in smoky back rooms and on the outskirts of town, men still made clandestine deals in the gathered darkness, trying to find ever more efficient ways to profit from misery.

I always went to go see Doc Hoff in the evenings before he moved on in the morning; I tended to get better deals then out of whatever remainder stock he didn't feel like hauling on the arduous trip to Rivet City. It was still often an uphill battle to get a deal out of him. I liked Doc Hoff—it was wonderful to have a conversation with someone that could actually _read_—but his asshole puckered up tighter than a snare drum when it came to discounts and price breaks. Times like they were, I didn't blame him; as businessmen, we all had to be thrifty bastards to turn any sort of profit. Along with goods, we dealt in stories, rumors and facts, the unspoken agreement being that if either of us profited off such information, we'd let the other in on the cut.

Normally, I relished in this sort of gossiping, but Doc was telling me something I didn't want to hear.

"I don't believe it," I said, shaking my head, "I won't believe it, not until I see it myself. She wouldn't do that."

"Hand to God," said Doc apologetically, crooked fingers patting his heart. Puffs of dust rose from the suit.

"And you're sure it was her? Perhaps you mistook her for somebody else."

"Tall, black hair and eyes, pretty. She had on some hodge-podge of armor, but I could still see parts of the vault jumpsuit she had on underneath it. looked like the 'Vault Dweller' to me."

"I see. Well." I mulled that over. Doc might mince his words, or dance around the truth, but he had never lied to me, or at least not to my knowledge. "How many others have you told?"

"You're the first; I only just started my rounds. Odd, though. It sort of goes against the grain of everything else she's doing, doesn't it? An opportunist, though. I like that."

"You would," I said distantly.

I hadn't seen Audrey in three weeks. Just when a few minutes or hours passed that I didn't think of her, that fucking DJ would come on and start singing her praises. If I had been going on his info alone, I'd have thought the girl could have swam through a river of shit and come out smelling of roses on the other side. Three Dog could hardly shut up about her; some sort of strange gang/cult reasoned with at Arefu, a disastrous science experiment in Grayditch cleaned up and the lone survivor reunited with family in Rivet City, the Declaration of Independence recovered from the mutie-infested ruins of the Archives.... She got around, that was for damn sure.

Maybe things had changed for her somewhere in that length of time. Everyone got hard up for caps, sure, and she might have robbed me (and probably the Stahls and God only knew who else), but... she hadn't seemed like the _type_ to...

"Perhaps you should keep this between us for now, eh, Doc?"

He looked genuinely perplexed. "Why? You don't have any sort of invested interest in her, do you?" His eyes were searching.

Well, no. But... aww, fuck, why did I care what that little cunt did? She'd thieved from me; she deserved to have her name dragged through shit, deserved some retribution, and maybe more dirty, underhanded things that she'd done would come out of the woodwork and into the light, maybe earn herself a few broken limbs or a hole in the head. Or Three Dog would hear of some of her misdeeds, and maybe... and maybe he wouldn't believe it. Or if he did feel out some fragment of truth, he wouldn't mention it, because people were just so fucking tickled to have someone to root for, someone on their side.

"I'm just saying, if what you're reporting is true, Doc, then she—being what she is—might be the wrong sort of person to spread rumors about."

He pursed his lips and thought that over. "Well... I suppose..."

"Between us. Unless you can make some sort of profit from it—but you're no Regulator, Doc."

He nodded. "Perhaps you're right. But I'll let you know if anything else comes of it."

"Good man."

"Any interesting nuggets of info on your end?"

"Not much, sorry to say. That Stahl boy is becoming quite the little chem monkey, though."

"Which?"

"Leo."

"Why don't you supply him?"

"I prefer not to deal with the junkies directly. He's got the caps, though—and he'll take any asking price, if you dangle it in front of him long enough. I'd bilk him for all he's worth." Leo didn't have the caps, though; what he had were the Brass Lantern's caps. It was my sincerest hope that Leo would steal enough from the family business that they'd either have to sell the shit-heap to me, or fold. "And Moira might be buying up a lot of chems, but she's not using them on herself. Or not much. All for some sort of crackpot experiment; I wouldn't worry about her encroaching on your business, though."

"Much obliged," he purred. He seemed to think of something. He retrieved a leather pouch from his brahmin, stiff and heavy with caps, and held it out to me. "Eulogy sends his regards, by the way."

"Shit." I hesitated for a moment, almost reached out my hand... and then crossed my arms over my chest, leaving the money to dangle. "No, not this time. Tell Mr. Jones he can keep his blood money for another day."

"Are you sure you want me to tell him that?"

"Verbatim."

"Alright," said Doc Hoff in a sigh that suggested that he was used to being the bearer of bad news. "How's the leg treating you?"

"Better," I said, "that ointment of yours really cuts down on the healing time."

"As advertised." There was already thin, red, ugly scar tissue on my thigh. It'd been a week since Andy had stabbed me. It still pained me and I couldn't disguise the limp in my step. So long as I didn't exert myself, I'd be fine.

"Let's see what you have this time around," I said. Doc grinned and held out a whiskey bottle with the label scratched off, the liquid inside clear. "Moonshine, Doc?" I asked, swishing the bottle around, holding it up to one of the searchlights.

"Of the most potent variety."

"And how am I to know it's any good?"

"It's of the finest, cheapest, organic, locally produced post-war vintage available." The man insisted, "It's really quite refreshing."

"And whereabouts did it come from?"

"Around."

"Ahhh, c'mon with ya, Doc..."

"South-ish, and that's all I'll say. You know I can't disclose my sources, Colin! Supply and demand, my good man!" I opened the unsealed bottle, sniffed it, and tears almost streamed down my face.

"You drink it, then," I said, holding it out to him. He looked momentarily chilled, making no move to take it from me.

"Oh, I couldn't do that. It would go straight to my head."

"And make you go blind."

"Blind drunk, yes."

"And possibly literally blind?"

He hesitated. "Possibly," he admitted after a time with an apologetic smile.

"I'll pass. Just give me a variety pack of the usual."

We dickered over the price of two crates of Nuka-Cola, beer, scotch, vodka, whiskey, gin and a bottle of single barrel Kentucky bourbon_, _which is something I hadn't seen in—Jesus—fifteen years, maybe? Much better than the rot-gut third shelf whiskey I was accustomed to. 90-proof too. This last would be strictly for me, so that I might get fucked up in fine form. I also picked out a few packs of Rad-X, some stimpacks, copious amounts of Jet, Psycho, Buffout, etc.

"So if you don't use these chems yourself, and you don't sell them in town, what do you do with them, Colin?"

"Ah, now, you've got your deals and I've got mine, Doc."

"Not even a little hint to—"

_CRACK_—A rifle shot sounded from above, deafeningly loud, Stockholm looked back over the steel wall back into the _interior_ of Megaton, swore, ejected the shell, fired again.

"What in the hell—" started Hoff, but his merc was quicker, slung her rifle from her back, sighted, and fired in the direction of Springvale. I whirled. There were at least six or seven of men, and God knew how many more waiting on the other side of the ridge.

Raiders. I could just make out the cobbled together armor, the skin baked dark by the sun, the wild hair. And they were all armed, with rifles and pistols and—fuck, was that a minigun? Oh, holy _shit_. They moved with relentless efficiency, weaving through the rocks and trash, zig-zagging, unpredictable. They didn't yell or whoop or scream profanities, just ran. The raider with the minigun was slower, but was moving ever closer all the same, and I just knew we'd be reduced to a fine red mist when he got in range.

Stockholm took down two of them, but by the time he'd taken his sights on the one with the minigun, he had to jump back to avoid a spray of bullets.

_Oh, fuck, fuck, FUCK..._

Don't get me wrong—I'm a decent shot, good with a knife, and I'm not a coward by any means, but men don't get to be my age out there without learning when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.

_"Stockholm! Stocky! Open the fucking door!" _He couldn't hear me. He was too busy fending off gunfire from both directions. I had to squeeze off a shot from my own pistol to get his attention. He whirled on us, ready to fire.

"Stocky, let us back in!"

"They're inside! They're inside the fucking town!" Inside the town. Inside Megaton. It was as if someone poured ice water down my back.

"Inside? The fuck do you mean, inside, how in the hell—"

He ignored me, fired again, and there was a scream from beyond the gate.

"_Hey, now, part-ner, careful with them thar—Commencing lawful use of deadly force,"_ said Deputy Weld, the robot's original programming overriding the hokey accent Moira had installed. It started firing, laser singeing the air.

"I'd rather get slaughtered in there than out here, now open that fucking door!"

He hit the switch. I heard the turbine wheeze to life and then cut off almost immediately. _Really. Of all the fucking rotten luck_—the spotlights dimmed, flickered, and died, throwing the area into darkness. Someone had cut off the power. The door was open only a few inches. I looked around—they were getting closer—

"Stocky! Hold 'em off on our side as long as you can!" I pointed Doc to a decrepit bed stand butted up against the metal wall, the frame made of grade-A solid pre-War American rolled steel pipes.

"That bed over there! Grab a post!" To the merc, "Keep firing—I don't give a shit whether or not you hit them, just keep them off our asses!" She nodded, eyes hard, jaw clenched.

"Hey! That's _my_ merc, you're ordering—"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Doc, come off it and _help_ me!"

We yanked off some pipes and wedged them in the gap between the two doors. I glanced up—Stockholm and the merc were laying down a volley of gunfire, holding them back, if only for a moment. I strained, black stars shooting in my peripheral vision, Doc's face red, every chord of his neck straining. I heard a clatter of metal, but it was the sound of Deputy Weld felled yet again. I didn't think it would work and I was about to give up, but then the door and the posts shrieked with the sound of stressed metal and complaining rust. The door yielded fifteen inches and no more; it was enough. Luckily, the Wasteland keeps people trim—and it would hopefully keep out the fucker with the minigun too.

I'd gotten halfway through the gap, pistol in hand, when Doc hesitated.

"No, wait! Bess! We need to bring her in too!"

"Not enough time—you can buy another brahmin, Doc!"

"With what fucking money? Everything I own is on this Goddamn cow!" He yanked on the brahmin's halter, pulling with all his weight but the bovine would have none of it, all four eyes rolling up in terror, lowing, more than ready to run off at an awkward gallop if she could get her heads.

"She won't fit through the gap, Doc, be reason—"

Yanking, murderously slow, straining. "She'd fit if you get that door open wider!"

But Doc's merc had apparently taken about as much of his shit as she could stand. She spun and fired in one seamless movement, landing a bullet right above one of the brahmin's eyes. Doc released the rope, shocked. The animal teetered, staggered and collapsed in a clatter of bottles and boxes.

"You _bitch!_" Doc howled, outraged.

"Aw, fuck you, Hoff!" she growled back, grabbing him by the tie and yanking him towards the door in much the same fashion he'd tried to haul his brahmin.

"When all this is over, you're fired!"

"You can't fire me 'cause I fuckin' _quit_, you—"

Half her face disappeared. She fell to the ground. Doc stared at her body dumbly, mouth slack, an "oh dear" expression painted across his blood-splattered face. I reached down and snapped the rifle out of her hands, stripped her of her bandoleer, grabbed Doc by the arm, and dragged him in with me.

The place was blanched by the moon, the town cast into stark black and blue punctuated by the yellow-white flash of muzzle fire. There was the _TAT-TAT-TAT_ of automatic weapons, sounded like either Jericho or Simms—either them or one of the raider fucks had gotten a hold of a Chinese assault rifle off a corpse. I could also make out the booming report of Creel's revolver. Shadowed figures were running everywhere, some of them were screaming—one of them had a machete raised and bared skin, a flash of acid green hair in the moonlight—and I raised the rifle to my shoulder and fired and he fell to the dirt with a shriek.

One of the running figures stopped—someone short and small, tentatively stepping towards me. "M-Mister Moriarty?" Maggie Creel.

"Where's Billy?"

"I don't know!" she wailed, "He-he was next to me—and then someone—someone—" Tears were streaming down her face.

"C'mere, sweetie," I said, and took her brusquely by the arm, practically shoving her at Doc Hoff. "Doc, you're useless in a firefight—take the girl, hide under a building or something!"

He looked like he was going to protest leaving my side, but another shot fired close by got his ass moving, hauling a sobbing Maggie after him.

There were so many people running, absolute chaos. I looked up as Stocky leaped, just barely hooking his fingers over the railing of the balcony on Simms house. I heard a grunt as someone shot him in the back of the thigh, but he hefted himself up and slid into a more fortified position. I dropped behind the leaky water pipe, waiting. Stockholm was staring at me, grimacing, trying to figure out what the fuck my plan was as he struggled for a clip.

It wasn't more than thirty seconds later that I heard the creek of unyielding metal. Must've tried to push it open more from the other side, then gave up. I saw an arm poke through the door. I waited. A shoulder. A head. Another arm and another head. I waited still. Three of them shimmied through, guns in hand, big, beefy fuckers, and they started pulling on the door, trying to force it wider to make way for the fourth guy, the one with the ammo crate strapped to his back, hefting his minigun, barrels spinning, warming up, his head bisected by my sights—

Stocky and I both fired twice, head shots, dropping all four of them while they were fucking around with the gate, all of them landing in a disorganized heap right where I wanted them to be. Perfect.

"Murder-hole!" I yelled up at Stockholm. "You'll be able to hit every fucking one of them that come through the gap!" They'd be so slowed up by tripping over all the other dead bodies, killing whomever came through would be child's play.

"Don't tell me how to do my job!" he shouted back, squeezing off another round at a fifth fucker that was too stupid to realize his mistake until he made a grab to recover the minigun.

I was nervous and skittish on the outside, on the edge of the Wastes, but Megaton was my town, my home—fucking _MINE_—and I'd be damned if I was going to let some half-baked assholes tear to the ground what had been created with a lifetime's worth of sweat, blood and tears.

I headed around the rim, crouched low, and shot at anyone that didn't look like they belonged. There—spiked armor, firing down on two people cowering behind a sheet of siding—brand new hole in his gut—over there, behind Craterside Supply, another half-naked asshole doing a thorough job of stabbing and hacking some poor settler to death—his head snapped back with a twitch of my finger. It was hard to tell who was friend and who was foe, because almost everyone in Megaton insisted on wearing their ordinance to dinner, and some of them were dirtier and weirder-looking than others. I snuck up behind some little shit with a mohawk and got a knife to the throat before I realized it was one of my renters at the Common House. She stared up at me in abject horror, gun dropping from her trembling hand. I muttered an apology and pushed her away from me.

The hair rose up on the back of my neck. I whirled, just in time to ram the butt of my rifle into the gut of another raider in stinking, blood-soaked leather. He seethed at me, brandishing a sword, doubled over—and didn't scream, or hurl profanity, but bared his teeth and came at me again, too close in to shoot with the rifle. I blocked the swing of the sword with the stock of the rifle, the force of it jarring me up both arms, again, again, then he changed angles, going in for a low stab to the guts—

A gunshot sounded close enough to deafen, and hot blood splashed across my face as the upper half of the raider's skull disappeared.

"God_damn_ I fuckin' missed this!" I barely heard someone yell, is if he were yards away and not a few feet. Jericho was covered in blood, none of it his own, all hopped up on adrenaline and grinning from ear to ear. He said something else, probably something along the line of him saving my ass, but I couldn't hear him for the ringing in my ears. I shook my head. He threw back his head and laughed before jogging back into the thick of things—I didn't follow, that was no place for an old man with a bum leg.

I kept stalking the outer rim picking off whom I could. A sort of calmness settled over me, something I hadn't felt in years. I've heard it called the red fog; Jericho calls it "the zone," but if pressed, he can't really put words to describe it. I can, though I suppose it's a different experience from person to person. It's a Zen kind of thing, really, the strange suspension between absolute concentration and an absolute absence of conscious thought, dissolution of the boundary between gun and hand, between object and subject. I didn't think, I didn't feel. My hands moved of their own accord and reflex, found targets on their own, and men fell.

But I hadn't lost myself so completely that I hadn't realized that things weren't going well. We were getting no where, no fucking strategy—people running around everywhere and you couldn't be sure who deserved to have his head blown off 'til you were close enough to practically touch him—shooting at each other in the fucking _dark—_

I could make out Simms in the thick of it, going toe to toe with a raider—he'd managed to strap on a bayonet on the end of his rifle, stabbing where he couldn't shoot, his ridiculous hat missing, duster slicked with blood, that cheap steel star winking in the near-darkness.

...That star... steel...

"Simms! SIMMS, the armory! Give me the key to the ARMORY!" I tried to roar over the yelling and gun play, but my throat felt raw and strained.

He hesitated for only a moment before yanking the leather thong on his neck, breaking it, and flinging it in my direction. I scooped it out of the dirt, turned, and ran like hell, hobbling as fast as I could. Somewhere, I could hear Jericho laughing like a fucking loon. I realized that blood was streaming hot and fresh down my leg from the newly opened stab wound. I limped up the catwalk, breathing hard, doing my best to dodge settlers and townspeople sprinting in the other direction.

I stepped on something that had some give to it, and heard a yelp.

"Moira?" The blue of the jumpsuit could just barely be made out.

"Colin! Fancy meeting you here," she said with a cheerfulness that was the antithesis of the bloodshed occurring all around us. Moira Brown was lying flat on her back, a clipboard loosely grasped in one hand, limbs awkwardly askew.

"Are you hurt?"

"I wasn't before you stepped on my hand."

"What the fuck are you doing on the ground there?"

"Oh, I was just doing some research; I wanted to see how effective playing dead in case of raider attack. It's for the book," she said. I don't know what it is about the Wasteland, but its always seemed like "talented genius" and "bat-shit crazy" went hand in hand.

"You daffy fucking woman! People are dying and you're lying here on the fucking ground when you could be of some use!"

"But I—" I reached down, grabbed her by the front of her jumpsuit and hauled her to her feet. "Hey! That wasn't very—"

"You wanna really help people, work on getting the Goddamn lights back on!"

She blinked and cocked her head to the side like an inquisitive spaniel. "Do you really think that'll help?"

"Shit, yes! Can you do it?"

"Sure! No problem! I mean, I think so. Maybe."

Christ, of all the fucking pointless things I could do at a time like this. I glared at her vapid face and hurried past, more pressing things on my mind.

I could hear it long before I had made it all the way up the building, a grating, whirring noise that was frenzied and vicious. The key... the key, fuck, did I drop it? No, no, still in my fist—I'd been clenching it so hard that my palm was sticky with my own blood. I hadn't even noticed the pain.

I rammed the key home and the door was flung open from the inside, almost knocking me into the side of the building. A olive-drab painted Mr. Gutsy launched itself from the armory, all three arms whirling and ready to deliver hot death to any that opposed it.

"There's nothing I like better than making some other poor bastard die for his country!" Deputy Steel screamed in a human-like voice that I'd always found deeply unsettling, especially when it held such obvious enthusiasm. Now I welcomed it—everyone in town, even the settlers, was programmed into it's friendly file. It jetted down towards the thick of things, firing the plasma weapon with one mechanical arm, while the other scorching the raiders that got too close. I hobbled after it in a low crouch, feeling like too much of a target on the catwalk. I'd done what I could for the town; it was time to find somewhere to hunker down and avoid the jets of plasma and the fire and bullets that were shooting off in every direction. Christ, but my leg burned, every step grating my pants against raw, bleeding nerve endings—I just hadn't noticed 'til that point how much it hurt.

The shadows of dead bodies lay everywhere. I wondered if Gob or Nova were among them. I grimly considered which would be more expensive to replace. I looked around, seeing if there were any raiders to take an easy shot at, seeing if any damage had been done to any of my buildings. Saloon had a piece of siding ripped off of it—Common House had the front door wide open, what looked like a body sprawled halfway out the door—MacLaren's place looked alright—good, good; I slid behind the building, protected by the sheeting of the structure and the retaining wall behind it. Good place to snipe from, too. I had a narrow view of the bomb, the entrance and the Brass Lantern.

And, son-of-a-bitch, there he was—Andy Stahl, cowering behind the counter of his own restaurant next to the fridge, gun clutched to his chest. I could make out the whites of his eyes and the white bandage on his nose and on his cauliflowered ears. He wasn't shooting back or fighting, just trying his best to melt into the sheet metal. I think that's what really pissed me off the most, to the point where hate clouded the calm, single-minded purposefulness that had come over me—if he'd have been fighting or taking pot shots at the raiders that scrambled by, I'd have let him alone, glad the little shit had been of some use. But, no, he wasn't doing _anything_, doing nothing to help the people he'd shaved so many caps off of, nothing to help the landless settlers that were dying to defend the property that he fucking _owned_—just slowly scooting his ass to the door of his restaurant, trying to escape.

_No one's watching_. I took a quick glance around. It was total chaos—Deputy Steel was wreaking havoc among the remaining raiders and most of the townsfolk were dealing with their own adversaries—bullets flying everywhere, it was dark, and the deafening roar of guns and plasma and the _screaming_ and no one was watching, no one would ever know, not a _fucking soul_ would ever find out—

I raised the rifle, took aim—

—and Jenny Stahl ran right into my sights just as I pulled the trigger.

I didn't even wait for her to hit the ground. I turned and ran behind the building before I could see Andy's face—before he could see _my_ face—

"Fall back! Fall the fuck back!" a man screamed; it was the first time I'd heard any of the raiders actually say a word. As one, almost a dozen shadows stopped attacking, turned and started running for the rim, laid down a hailstorm of gunfire to cover their retreat, the robot doggedly followed, screaming epithets and blasting hellfire.

"Jenny? Oh my God, _JENNY!_" Andy Stahl's anguished scream was drowned out by the bullets.

With a hum and a flicker, the lights came back on.


	8. Chapter 8

_I love me my beta, Kimmae—and all the lovely, glowing reviews I've been getting lately!_

Chapter 8

"Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. Goddamn pinko commie scum," muttered Deputy Steel sourly, it's mechanized voice distorted by intermittent bursts of static. The bot listed heavily to one side, hull pocked with bullets. "Stabilizer three operating at seventeen percent capacity. Neural pathways 0-Z-7-8-9-0 and 1-P-3-3-9-2 have suffered critical degradation. Please escort your Mister Gutsy to the General Atomics International Service Center in Kensington, Maryland, to avoid further damage."

"Oh, don't worry, sweetie, we'll have you fixed up in no time!" said Moira Brown brightly, and she patted one of the metal arms affectionately.

"Cease and desist, civilian, or I will be forced to act upon my disciplinary protocols," said the robot, but it's heart wasn't in it, and I watched as it permitted Moira to take it by the arm and lead it up to her shop.

The source of the disaster was easy to track down. Turned out that Rory MacLaren had spent the better part of a month sneaking about in the night, prying metal from the walls and infrastructure in places where he thought no one would notice so he could build his little shack—not realizing that all those funny little symbols and marks scratched into the metal was in fact Billy Creel's handwriting, inventorying when the scrap had been purchased, from what scav crew, and where it had been placed in town. MacLaren had stolen so much from one less-traveled section of the wall that the raiders easily peeled back some of the remaining mesh behind the water treatment plant and were able to just waltz in, guns blazing.

"You know how many people are dead today because you were too fuckin' cheap to buy your own Goddamn scrap?" Simms stood over a bloodied MacLaren, gun in hand. He'd had to pull two livid settlers off of the man once the theft was realized and the news spread throughout town.

"I didn't know! I didn't know, okay? I didn't think that—I'm sorry, just—please—" Simms pistol-whipped him with the butt of his revolver and he yelled, "Jesus Christ, that fuckin' _hurt!_"

"Yep, Colt makes a mighty hefty firearm," Simms growled, "Now get your shit and get out. You've got five minutes. You ain't over that ridge when your time's up, I'll fuckin' end ya!"

Simms and I waited by the entrance, not speaking. Jericho joined us, leaning against one of the support walls, arms crossed, tense and tight-lipped. His previous combat-induced giddiness had worn off. Every time Andy's wail echoed I managed not to react at all, but Jericho flinched and scowled. I instead stared balefully at the crates I'd managed to salvage; only one in three bottles of booze had emerged unscathed from the initial attack. The chems I'd bought from Doc Hoff had been riffled through, almost half of that was gone. Even if I'd wanted to replace what was missing, or demand that Doc resupply me, I couldn't; Doc Hoff's inventory had been picked clean by a desperate Doc Church.

Rory MacLaren streaked past us, a pack on his back and suitcases in each hand, stuffed beyond capacity and fit to burst. We watched him in silence. He got about fifty yards before one of the suitcases exploded, spilling clothes, tools and junk everywhere.

"Isn't his time up?" I said, hefting the rifle.

"You just let him be," said Simms.

MacLaren hesitated at the suitcase, then, seeing us still staring, me with the rifle at half mast, he thought better of it and abandoned it, sprinting for cover. Rory MacLaren retreated over the ridge towards Springvale, straining under the luggage. I sighed and lowered the rifle.

"You should have killed him," I said to Simms.

"Maybe."

"Id've killed him," I said.

"I reckon that's the difference between you and me. The damage's been done; killin' him won't change nothin'."

"Would've made me a damn sight happier; I should have been watching him better." It was the first time I'd admitted any wrong to him of any sort in all the years I'd known him.

"Yeah. You should have." He didn't say anything nasty or berate me for being so Goddamn careless with my own property, just a flat statement that brooked no argument. I wished he would scream at me, throw something, maybe take a swing at me—I knew how to react to that, to violence and rage, but his weary, pained disappointment left me lost.

It occurred to me that people never learn shit. It's like we can't even see it coming. War after war, disaster after disaster—and we just rebuild the fucking hut on the sand next to a tumultuous sea, swear up and down that it'll never happen again, that we've learnt from our mistakes, and then cry and scream when the storm inevitably takes it back. Sure, it's easy to connect the dots after an event for us, but some things are just so fucking obvious that it makes you feel like a wretchedly incompetent sack of shit when you realize it after the fact. It wasn't the first raider attack, nor did I expect it would be the last that could have been prevented if someone had just taken notice and a little fucking initiative.

I heard someone approaching. I looked over my shoulder and saw Doc Hoff trudging up the hill towards us as he mopped his brow with a blood-splattered handkerchief. Simms had enlisted him to help Doc Church with the wounded, and it was clearly telling on him; not only was he not used to being ordered around, but I'm sure getting into a screaming match with Church over the care of the well-being of the wounded versus limited supplies didn't help his overall psyche. He fished a cigarette out of one of his ruined suit's pockets as he approached.

"Got a light?"

Jericho volunteered, wordlessly holding out his own lit cig. Doc Hoff gratefully accepted, then dragged on his own cigarette like a dying man chugged water. Again, the silence stretched between us at a distance of miles, but I could tell what Simms and Jericho wanted to know, but were afraid to hear.

"How many dead, Doc?" I asked.

"Seven of your transient residents; My merc, Diana; Miss Brown's merc; three of those Atom sycophants; Cromwell's wife; Miss Stahl."

I kept my face carefully blank. Jericho grimaced at the mention of Jenny.

"Jesus Christ," said Simms, "all of them?"

"Well," said Doc, "the true count won't be known until the entire town has been searched."

No one made a move to go back into the town proper. None of us relished the thought of looking that closely at dead bodies—dead friends especially. We stood watching the horizon. Something had to be said, something that had been troubling me for hours, not long after the fighting started.

"Does anyone else have the notion that something about this whole event was more than a little odd?" I asked.

"I had my suspicions," said Simms.

"If those were raiders, I'm a fuckin' cocktail waitress," said Jericho.

For the most part, raiders were a disorganized lot, and the ones that had so stupidly attacked in the past were small groups, save the attack in '44 that took my father as well as orphaned and widowed two dozen more. Usually the stupid bastards just stood about, screaming and cussing, shooting at the walls or chucking grenades until Stocky, Simms, or Jericho killed them. It was strange—no, downright _unnerving—_how organized the rabble had been, how efficiently they'd attacked.

"They're too clean. And look at the guns," I said. I held up one of them from the pile that had been collected; a sub-machine gun that was beat up, just like everything else in this God-forsaken world, but was in otherwise in excellent shape, babied and repaired by someone who knew what the hell they were doing. "And where are the women? They always bring a few harpies with them."

"Yes, very strange," agreed Doc Hoff. "Almost all of the raiders I've happened across are animals at best—"

"You just watch your mouth, you fuckin' pencil-necked, four-eyed cocksucker—"

"—Present company excluded, of course. What I mean to say is they were organized, not just running about like rabid dogs."

"I got the same notion," said Simms darkly, then sighed, "We gotta get those bodies outta town. Last thing we need is a Goddamn plague on top of everything else."

"I'm injured," I said, gesturing to my leg. "I'm not doing shit."

"Well pop a stimpack and get on with it," growled Simms. "Half the town can't stand, let alone walk."

"Yeah, Moriarty—stop being such a pussy," said Jericho. I swear to God, if I hadn't been so fucking drained, I'd have beat the ever living shit out of him, or at the very least stabbed him to see how he liked staggering around with blood in his boot. Maybe my exhaustion was what he'd been counting on.

As it was, all I could manage was a weary, feeble, "Blow me, assholes." I was going to check on my properties before I bothered with anything else. I didn't even know if I had any employees left.

I headed back into town, carrying my lone crate of supplies with me. The place looked like an abattoir—bodies everywhere, some of them even hanging from the catwalks, blood staining the dirt. What wasn't absorbed had seeped down towards the bomb, red water pooled around it as if in a stopped-up drain. The basin reeked of gunpowder, blood, and burnt ozone. Everything was eerily silent but for the vultures calling to each other, circling low over town though it was well past midnight, and for the soft crack of Harden Simms's BB-gun as he kept the birds at bay.

Every time I glanced at a body's face, I half-expected to see my pa staring up at me. I did not let my eyes stray to the sad little gathering in front of the Brass Lantern. I limped around the rim, cussing up and down when I slipped on some spent shells, again when I didn't lift my injured leg high enough to avoid tripping on a step, nearly landing flat on my face twice—Christ, home had never felt so far away.

I looked towards my place; Gob was there, a combat knife in hand. I stopped in my tracks, ogling at him. I don't think I'd ever seen him with anything that could be called a deadly object. He stood guard over a pile of trash behind the men's toilets near the back door of the saloon, looking nervous.

"Gob." He looked up. There might have been some disappointment lurking in the tendons around his eyes and mouth when his eyes fell on my relatively unscathed body.

"Mr. Moriarty, sir," he acknowledged. He did not drop the knife.

"There a reason why you're armed?"

"Raider under the bathroom, sir."

"Alive?" Stupid question. He had the intelligence not to answer. I caught a bit of movement from underneath the sheet metal; a dark twitch.

"Well, hello there to ya!" I said, mockingly blithesome, hobbling towards the foot. I latched onto an ankle and yanked and got a gasp for my efforts. I looked under the metal, my gun at level with my eye. The man had good boots for a raider. I jerked my head at Gob and he latched onto the other leg and the two of us dragged him out into the floodlights and the man moaned wretchedly. One hand was camped on his gut, blood seeping between his fingers, and there was an empty stimpack in the other. He was dressed in metal armor adorned with spikes and mummified hands. An old guy, maybe _my_ age or so, which was un-fucking-heard of for a raider. He was as weathered by the elements as a radiation-hit tree, and just as scarred by violence. His eyes swam in pain but held no fear. He was breathing hard, wheezing, and I knew he didn't have long.

"Well, now, Gob, isn't this interesting? Ah, not feeling tip-top with that hole through your gut, are we, sir?" There was no response from the dying man. His eyes were only looking up in my approximate direction. I drew back my hand and cracked him once across the face so hard that Gob even flinched back out of reflex. He gasped and his eyes focused on me, face contorted in seething hate and pain but already starting to go waxen.

"Knife," I said to Gob, and held out my hand. The ghoul gave it to me handle first and even managed not to touch me. I held it to the light, making it flash. The raider glanced at it but the fear never came.

"No begging? No pleading? Are you not going to tell me who the fuck you even are?"

He glared at me, eyes widened, breathing faster, harsher—and then a look of surprise washed over his face, and all the breath went out of him in a sigh and his eyes turned inward, empty windows in a burned out house.

I sat back in the dirt, twirling my knife for a bit. I wished he'd gotten a slightly less mortal wound—then I could have cut on him to get the answers I was looking for.

"Could still do that yet," I said to myself.

I had a hunch. I yanked at the shoulder guard and the breastplate of the armor, found a leather chord and cut through. The shirt was clean underneath. I ripped the fabric and exposed the significantly paler skin of the shoulder. It felt as if someone had poured icy water down my back; the pink, angry scar tissue told me everything I needed to know.

"Tell Simms and Jericho to get their asses up here," I said to Gob.

He hustled off. I sat there in the dirt, grateful just to be left by myself for a few minutes. That peaceful solitude was short lived; another one of Andy's wails echoed up from the bomb, cutting me to the quick and stabbing me somewhere deep in the chest. My guts crawled, my throat felt constricted and hot and I clamped down on that feeling, cut it off as effectively as if I'd dropped down an iron curtain on it. I made my mind carefully blank. Mercifully, Jericho and Simms were quick in coming.

"For Christsake, _what_, Moriarty?" demanded Simms irritably, as if I'd just interrupted some urgent fucking business of his. The malice in his tone was oddly comforting. I wordlessly pointed to the dead man.

"Yeah, so what? We got dead people all over town," said Jericho, still huffing from the hike up.

"Look at his shoulder."

"Shoulder. Check. Holy shit, he's even got two of them," Jericho drawled.

"Oh, fuck off! I meant the scar!" I really _was_ going to stab him, so help me God, if he didn't shut up. His saving grace was Simms, who pinned him with a sharp glare when it looked like Jericho was going to rise to fresh levels of assholery. The sheriff went back to looking at the dead man's arm intently.

"I heard tell of men mutilating themselves to stay one step ahead of the law," said Simms. "Even seen it once or twice when I patrolled with the Regulators."

"Including the removal of tattoos?" I asked.

"You can do that?" asked Jericho, sounding puzzled.

"Sure—you can tinker with a laser weapon, get the output cut down and it'll just sort of singe off the first layer or two of skin," said Simms, poking at the shoulder with the tip of his boot. The scar tissue was fresh, as new and tender as the skin on my thigh.

"Sounds pretty fuckin' painful."

"That's why it ain't done often, which means this fella had to be pretty damned desperate to make sure that...." Simms seemed to reach for the right words and fell short.

"To make sure that we wouldn't be able to tell his affiliation, should he be captured or killed," I supplied.

"That's right."

"You know, if you look at it from this angle," said Jericho, tilting his head to the side, "it looks like... some sorta... claw, or tree or somethin'."

"Talon Company," said Simms, shock dawning, "son of a bitch, he's _Talon_ Company!"

"Or was, at some point," I corrected.

"I didn't see any tattoos on any of these other assholes," said Jericho, skeptical.

"They don't do that anymore," I said. "This fella's a veteran."

Simms narrowed his eyes. "The hell would a barkeep know about these bastards?"

"I've got a firm finger on the pulse of the Wasteland," I said, skirting around my source—not because I was ashamed, but because Simms got awfully touchy when anyone mentioned slavery.

"Talon Company," Eulogy Jones had said, indicating a brooding, middle-aged man sitting naked in one of the slave pens in Paradise Falls. There had been a tattoo of an eagle claw etched into the shoulder, the same size and orientation of the scar on the old bastard's arm. _"Steely motherfucks, hard to break, 'specially the older ones that's branded; the Company don't do that no more—they disown the ones that fuck up, and Company can't get blamed if they get captured or killed. Don't want to deal with any red tape. I'd let you have him for four, but I'd say he's not even worth that, not 'lest you were gonna use him for target practice."_

It didn't look good.

"So, we fucked?" asked Jericho tentatively.

I snorted. "If Talon has a contract to wipe us out? Yeah, I'd say we're fucked royally."

"Whose eye you piss in recently, Moriarty?" demanded Simms, voice thundering.

"No one that'd have the caps to hire a whole battalion to take out the town. How about you?" I mocked his ridiculous accent: "I heared tell that there's this gosh durn group o' varmints called the _Tal-lon Company_ that don't take too kindly 'ta them there _Regulators!_"

"Hey! Keep your fuckin' voices down, will ya?" Jericho growled, stabbing his chin in the direction of two settlers hauling a body down to the bomb. "You wanna get the whole town worked up about somethin' we can't do shit about?"

Jericho as a voice of reason and an advocate for discretion—wonders never cease. We kept the information to ourselves for the time being—no reason to distress the town with the information that we might be on the hit list of the most ruthless, murderous group of fucks in the Capital Wasteland. We only had a few facts anyway: the men that attacked us were not raiders; they had been well armed, well heeled and organized; the man that had died outside my saloon _might_ have been a Talon Company member at some point. The rest could only be speculated.

Evening passed into morning in a haze. I think I all but passed out for an hour or two not far from the bodies I'd helped haul to the outskirts of town. We buried the dead at sunrise, putting them in as deep as the hard pan would allow. Simms insisted that I say something pretty over them, as I was the only one in town that owned a Bible, otherwise I'd have already ran back to the comfort of my booze.

Jenny Stahl looked very small in the hole her brothers had carved out for her, limbs arranged in a parody of sleep. She was dressed in her jumpsuit, the only thing I'd ever seen her wear, and her head and face were wrapped in a towel; blood bloomed on the fabric from where I'd shot her, just above the ear.

It took all the willpower I possessed to keep a straight face. For most of my adult life, my motto has been to regret nothing. But there was no stopping the agony that ripped at my chest—I could only pray that the monstrous guilt wouldn't burn my throat and come out me mouth in the form of some damning declaration of remorse.

Leo was glassy-eyed and distant. Jetting, probably.

"I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. Stahl."

"Oh. Thanks, Colin. You're alright," said Leo automatically, nearly dead to everything around him.

I said no such thing to Andy. He had long since stopped crying. He hadn't muttered so much as an 'Amen.' His face was blank as he threw the first fistful of loose dirt into Jenny's pit. His eyes burned though, furiously glaring at something the rest of us couldn't see. He'd have taken my sympathy as an admittance of guilt.

Stupid. Just fucking stupid. I shouldn't have done it, shouldn't have taken such a risk. Granted, we none of us were going to pass on in the twilight of our years, quiet and contented—I've never known a man to die a peacefully in his bed, neither in his sleep or surrounded by his family. Never. Death didn't have the patience. If I hadn't killed her, something else would have cut her down in the prime of her life.

But she was dead and I had killed her. That fact was irrefutable.

She hadn't been that bad of a person, for a Stahl—no, _especially_ for a Stahl; her brother Andy might not have given me the time of day without wanting to beat me to death with the clock, but Jenny'd always given me a smile of the proper dim wattage and a cordial hello.

A great man, a gentleman, might have confessed and taken whatever punishment was due with dignity and fortitude. A decent man would have maybe... I don't know, find some way to apologize, maybe try to make up for what had happened with some personal sacrifice, short of admitting to the deed. But if I'd gave up something for every person I'd killed over the years, then, Jesus, Id've died a pauper long before. I'd be hanged if I admitted to shooting her—even if I'd tried to pass it off as an accident, Simms or Andy would see right through it. And above the guilt, above the remorse, I just enjoyed living far too much.

We hauled the bodies of the attackers that didn't escape up to the hill and burned them in a big pile. I could never stand the smell of burning bodies. Not because the smell of death is abhorrent, but because it smells so wretchedly, disgustingly _delicious_. To someone so accustomed to freeze-dried fruit, molerat that crawled around in the stomach long after it was dead, and the rare occasion of a luxury like mirelurk, the aroma of those roasting bastards smelled like a barbecue out of fantasy and dreams. My mouth watered.

"Lets go up to the saloon," I said to Jericho.

We went up. Nova was alright—she'd had the good sense to hide up in the bar with one of my shotguns. Gob ducked back to his post shortly after all the bodies had been collected. In an hour or so, Doc Hoff had declared that he had done all there was that could be done, and joined us in the saloon with what was left of his meager supplies. We three men honored the fallen with a traditional Irish wake while the rest of the town did its best to pick up after the battle.

Which is to say, we got absolutely shit-faced.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

"You there, sir."

There was a man that I had never seen before. Just stood there before me, and his sour expression filled my field of vision.

"Jesus fucking _Christ_," I breathed, then to myself, wistfully: "why can't it ever be a beautiful woman?"

Did I fall asleep? I wasn't sure. I didn't remember falling asleep, but I also didn't recall the moment where I came back to lucidity. I was awake though, wasn't I? Yes, my dreams never looked as unnervingly slanted as all that. Headache? No? No. I wasn't hung over, but only by virtue that I was still drunk.

What the hell happened? I tried to think very hard. So hard that if I'd have lingered on it more, I might have had an aneurysm. I thought that I might have perhaps sampled Doc's moonshine... and I sang all the ballads that I knew from my pa's country at the top of my lungs, at Jericho's request, as I flung our empties at the bomb, much to the delight of the local cult, and Billy Creel had stopped by to join the festivities once he put his brat to bed. And Walter, despite his cracked ribs, as well as Lucy West, still grinning despite the—or maybe _because_ of—the bullet graze that had left an ugly gash across her shoulder.... Why the hell did my leg hurt so fucking much? Did I get hit? I dimly remembered that I'd gotten stabbed at some point and that I'd sworn to I'd kill the fucker that did it... once I remembered who the fuck the little fucker was. Christ, but my leg fucking _hurt_....

Gob watched us warily from the bar. Nova looked rather bemused, a little self-satisfied smirk on her blemish-free face. Jericho was sprawled on the floor in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around his leather jacket that doubled as pillow and drool receptacle. Doc Hoff was conspicuously absent.

The man said something, and his lips moved, and sounds issued from his throat, but he must have been speaking some other language.

"Huh?"

"La. Fay. Ette. Lafayette. I would like a Lafayette," he repeated himself, enunciating and stressing every syllable, but he still sounded like he was talking under water. God, the fuck was he on about? Was he looking for someone named Lafayette? Was he asking the way to Lafayette Square? Good luck with that; what was left of the White House and the surrounding gardens was swarming with ghouls and muties. Or did he want the dilapidated Lafayette Centre? Why the fuck would he want to go there? Sightseeing? House hunting? _Rent-to-own—fantastic condo, no HO fees, stainless steel appliances, overlooks irradiated ditch once known as the Anacostia River, no pets w/ over five limbs. _

Since I couldn't understand him, I just stared at him, one of the few times in my life I was ever rendered lost for words. The man was dressed in a suit the color of ash topped with a matching fedora. His face was oddly lineless and remarkably unremarkable. if I'd passed him in the street and been asked to recall something about him, I would have been hard pressed to remember anything but those eyes; they were unspeakably cold, pale, and prudishly narrowed behind his smoked glasses.

"I don't follow ya," I said.

The man sighed with weary disdain. "Four parts bourbon, one part dry vermouth, one part Dubonnet, a dash of bar sugar, and an egg white. Over crushed ice." His voice was dark, deep, malevolent and smooth.

I finally recovered. "Starting a bit early, aren't ya?"

"It's eight in the evening," he said frostily. I was about to call him on his bullshit, but the soft morning light that sifted through the cracks and holes in the sheet metal was coming through the wrong side of the building. I took a quick inventory in my head, which in all likelihood translated into a long, uncomfortable minute of silence.

"I've got... sugar. Have the zombie get it for you."

"Thank you, but no. I find rotting flakes of skin to sully the flavor," he said with a dismissive sniff.

Skin flakes. Right, that was pretty fucking disgusting, wasn't it? Horrible to think about, yes, but the flip-flop that my stomach made had absolutely nothing to do with thoughts of Gob's shedding flesh. I mashed a tightly balled fist against my mouth.

"Fine, I'll think of something else—you can produce _some_ decent cocktails, can you not?"

"You don't want me to do that," I groaned into my hand. And this was the point by which he and I apparently had had enough.

"Now see _here_, you vile, bumbling maggot! I've traveled many a taxing and arduous mile to arrive at this _putrescent cesspool_ that you insist upon calling a community, I want a drink and I _demand _satisfact—"

"_Move!_" I moaned, staggering to my feet, shoving the weirdo out of my way. The floor rolled alarmingly beneath my feet like a ship on an angry, vengeful sea, and every sound seemed muffled, as if there was cotton in my ears. Something twitched and cussed when I stepped on it, but I paid it little heed because all I could think of was he toilet, had to get to the toilet—sweet merciful God in heaven, where was it? There! Past the bar, right behind the curtain, a flimsy attempt at privacy that wouldn't have been an obstacle at any other time but had none the less trapped me, left me to flounder in a net of burlap but my fingers his something hard, cool and unspeakably filthy and my head was free—

And there she was, that fucking porcelain goddess that greeted me with open lid, and I was helpless to do anything other than fall to my knees and pay my respects.

Through all the retching, the bile and all the sordid mess I made, I could hear Nova's husky laugh:

"Welcome to Megaton, Mr. Burke."

I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the refreshingly cool enamel that had known so many countless asses...

* * *

...And then I opened my eyes. My head was pounding, throbbing, ripping apart at the fissures, my esophagus laced with fire, my stomach reeling. I shivered and moaned, burring my head in something soft, clutched and scrabbled at the mattress ticking in a desperate attempt to relieve some of the agony. I was sweating like it was a hundred degrees in there, and everything just _ached_, from my eyes, to all the muscles up and down my back to—God_damn_, even my _hair_ hurt.

As I came back to myself, I realized that some of the pounding wasn't coming from my own head. _Jesus, Mary and Joseph—what fresh new hell _is_ this?_ I turned one bloodshot eye outward. I was in my room, the same room I'd slept in for thirty years. The lantern sputtered, casting a sickly, fevered light over the small room and everything in it. Someone that I wanted to personally endorse for sainthood had left gin, a bottle of Mexican hot sauce and a tumbler by my bedside. The door was closed. The pounding came from beyond the door. Actually, it was more of a brisk rap that at all other times would have been considered a polite courtesy one would take before entering another's room, but I treated it as if it were a hostage situation.

"WHAT?!" I half screamed, half moaned.

A hesitation. "Sir, the goon is here to see you," said Gob. The loathing in his voice was unmistakable, not even bothering to hide it. Goon? What Goo... Oh, shit. _Shit_, of all the days, of all the fucking days, that asshole had to show up on a night that could be considered one of my least proud moments.

"Well, tell him to fuck off!"

Beyond the door: "He says you should fuck off—"

"I heard him," said a second voice, as rough as Gob's.

The door opened and in stepped what had first seemed to me like an aberration from a nightmare—a living, breathing corpse, taller than any man I'd ever seen, in black, battle-cured armor and armed to the teeth with a drum-barreled shotgun on his back, two pistols in his belt and a knife tucked in his boot. The eyes in that hateful, rotting, lantern-jawed face were assessing, calculating chips of ice.

"Moriarty," he ground out.

What weapon did I have closest at hand? Pistol? Gone. Had no idea where the fuck that went. Shotgun? Already seized by Nova during the attack, probably down at the bar still. Rusty bucket by my bedside half-full of my own vomit? _Check_.

"Don't come anywhere near me!" The ghoul didn't dignify that with a response, but his narrowed eyes said, 'gladly.'

"The chem shipment," the ghoul rumbled. Oh, God, the _chems_. I didn't know what to say—my head was swimming, whirling, and part of me was absolutely certain that if I let go of the mattress, I'd spin off the earth like a fucking top. I grunted and buried my face back into the pillow, holding on for dear life.

"The _chems_," the ghoul said, this time more forcefully.

Couldn't do shit while I was lying down. Had to at least act like I still had a modicum of dignity left. Okay. I was going to sit up. In a super-human force of sheer will, I got my hands under me and pushed off, the world around me reeling, my tender stomach threatening to revolt as I sat upright. I could almost feel the bile rising to my throat again.

"It's... Oh, Jesus..." I swung my numb legs off the bed and gripped my head in my trembling hands, trying to keep my skull from exploding. "Filing cabinet, bottom drawer," I said, head level with my knees.

He started rummaging and I pulled myself up, managed to grab the gin and the hot sauce, pouring them together in roughly equal amounts, got about as much in the tumbler as I did on the table. I swirled the contents together with a dirty finger, closed my eyes, pinched my nose, and tipped the foul concoction back, managing to catch my stomach unawares.

"This is not the amount my employer specified," I heard the ghoul say dispassionately. I opened my eyes again. He mulled over a plastic grocery bag with the remainder of Doc's stock and what I'd bought off the other traders and merchants over the last two weeks. I had to admit, the pickings were measly.

"Well, that's all that I have. Had a raider attack the other day, if that escaped your notice; things got damaged." My tongue felt thick and sluggish in my mouth and my voice was reduced to a croak not dissimilar from Gob's.

"I was instructed to shoot you if you tried to cheat me," the ghoul said. There was the promise of bodily harm in his voice without needing to adopt a malicious tone. He crossed his arms over his chest.

I was feeling better. Not great—in fact, I largely felt like shit—but shit was a step above what I'd been feeling before the little hangover cocktail. I don't know what it is that does it, because drinking alcohol after my body has violently protested the last bout seems so counter-intuitive, but Gob as my witness, it takes a bit of the misery off. Not much, mind you, but enough.

"Shoot me, eh? Well, take a fucking number. If you don't believe me, go ask around town." We both knew he would do no such thing. Stockholm didn't shoot him on sight only because I paid him not to. Simms, of course, had made a scene the first time the ghoul had shown up. I accused him of being an anti-ghoul bigot, certainly not in line with his Boy Scout Handbook at all, and he reluctantly allowed the ghoul in to trade _"so long as he don't start anything he can't finish, and doesn't stick around more'n an hour."_

"I'm charging fifteen a unit, just as always," I reminded him. "I'll send you a note to Azzie explaining. I'm not asking for all the payment, just for what I've got."

"Three months ago it was ten a unit."

"Can the goonie count? Your mother must be so proud. Three months ago there was cooler weather and it cost less to get the caravans moving in at regular intervals. Fifteen was what Ahzrukal agreed on in July, and it's still a steal."

"I should say."

"Well, If Azzie wants a better price, he can talk to Doc Hoff—ah, but Doc'll have nothing to do with ghouls. Now why is that, I wonder...?" I stroked my beard, feigning an introspective moment. "Oh, _that's_ right, you stabbed his merc to death and proceeded to work The Good Doctor over."

"Such were my orders." The ghoul's face was ominously blank. I couldn't tell you how it could have become any more vapid, and yet it was.

"Well, if Azzie wanted better prices on chems, hed've been better served to think twice before sending you to break all of the fingers on Doc's right hand with a pair of fucking pliers, would he have not?"

He gave me an unreadable stare. I knew there was only so much I could get away with. He could be pretty fucking ornery, and there could have been a world of difference between what Azzie had ordered, and what he had meant to order. I knew about the thing with the contract—I might have known more about it than the slave did his own self—but what I couldn't know was what sort of orders he'd been given, how specific they were, and how he'd interpret them if I got him all riled up.

So I backed down. "Ah, well, perhaps Doc'll get over it if you send him a fruit basket and a card. What do you have for me?" He tossed a metal tube on the table and I intercepted it before it could roll into the aforementioned sauce and alcohol. "Let's just see what Azzie's up to these days...."

I opened the tube and found an inventory of what he wanted by next month and also a folded slip of paper, a page out of a ruined book that'd been painted over. The ghoul started counting out the caps on the table top with a startling rapidity. Ahzrukhal's hand writing was as slanted as he was.

_Colin, _

_I thought you have an interest in purchasing some of the type of ordinance that lives and breathes, so I'd like to extend you an offer. Charon could do with a change of scenery, I believe; I'd lease you a timeshare, if you'd like. Just put in an offer. Or, perhaps we could work out some sort of trade—you need a bouncer, and I need a bartender. Think on it a bit, and get back to me._

_Best,_

_Ahzrukhal_

I looked up from Ahzrukhal's letter to the ghoul.

"You've got a _girl's_ name now?" was my tactless jeer, unable to resist.

"It's not—It's from—" he started, grating the words through clenched teeth before he regained a bit of his bland composure. "That is the last of your comments I will tolerate this evening," he said, with chilly finality. Fair enough.

"Did you read this?"

"I was not instructed to do so."

"So you were _not_ told that you _couldn't_ read the letter?" His lips twitched briefly in something that was either a grimace of distaste or a sardonic smirk, it was impossible to say, but I knew I had him. "And what do you think of it?"

His eyes narrowed. "Does it matter?"

I considered. "No, I suppose it doesn't."

And I wasn't sure whether it was the booze or his seething, radiation-ravaged glare that made me shudder.

A/N: Before I have someone write a comment about it—I'm very familiar with the story of Charon, ferryman of the river Styx (or Acheron, as Kimmae pointed out) but Moriarty would not be. Also, there's at least two different cocktail recipes that I've found for a Lafayette. Both of them sound absolutely foul. The one above is from my _New New York Bartender's Guide_.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I woke up already sweating, and I had to practically peel myself from the mattress. It was going to be a nasty hot day, despite it being well into September—not that seasons really mattered anymore. A heavy gray ceiling had been suspended over Megaton for days, threatening to drench with mercifully rare bout of acidic rain, but in the mean time it made the air cloyingly stagnant and oppressive.

Neither Gob, Nova nor the Johnnie Nova'd hooked were awake yet, but they'd stayed up fairly late and likely wouldn't wake for hours. I tended to get an early start; I liked the quiet first in the morning, and it usually gave me some time to get some numbers crunched without anyone fucking with me. Or, perhaps might light a cigarette and watch the sun come up over the top of the rim of the scrap metal barrier, when the inherent ugliness of Megaton was lessened somewhat with the soft, forgiving light of dawn.

I threw on some pants, not even bothering with a shirt, and buckled my gun belt low on my hip. I got about halfway to the stairs when the hackles rose on the back of my neck. I haven't lived as long as I have by ignoring my gut, and I knew—I just fucking _knew_—that there was someone downstairs that ought not be. I drew my gun, whirled, flattened myself against the wall, and pointed it down over the side of the railing.

There was someone in combat armor just sitting there near the door. His hand twitched when he saw the gun, but he wisely kept it folded with the other in his lap.

"Good morning, Mr. Moriarty," said a voice of a decidedly feminine persuasion, startlingly blasé for someone with a gun pointed at their head. It took me a few heartbeats to recognize the voice. _I'll be damned, it's a woman! _

Not just any woman—what was left of her hair was about chin-length and matted to her skull with grime and sweat, her face was creased with dirt, and there there were white circles around her eyes from goggles, but even with all the tarnish, there was no mistaking her.

"Audrey," I breathed. She was alive and whole. She'd come back to Megaton—she'd come back to _me_. I was thrilled, elated, even, and I felt a flush of pleasure—right before it was overshadowed by a deep, festering ire of such vehemence that it caught me off-guard, both notions that she was _'my baby!'_ and _'that backstabbing cunt!' _fighting for dominance in my brain.

She had a much better piece that time around, a scoped rifle of some derivative that was propped against the wall as casually as an umbrella, and the dark, tight leather she wore hugged her rangy, lanky frame, all muscle and sinew. Her face was too gaunt; haggard, almost, as if she'd skipped too many meals. Not that she'd been a porker or anything when she'd first crawled out of that hole, but she'd certainly looked healthier and miles more attractive when she'd had a bit more meat to her.

My free hand went to my neck, where the cord that held my key still dangled. She must have broken in through the back again; I wondered if she'd already sacked what was left of my office but then dismissed it—she sure as hell wouldnt've stuck around if she's just come back to rob me again. Surely she wasn't _that_ fucking stupid. I lowered my gun, but didn't holster it. I headed downstairs, glowering at her as I went.

"You've got some fucking nerve coming back here after the shit you pulled," I growled at her.

"The things I took," she said flatly, sounding disappointed, a little ashamed, perhaps.

"Yes, the things you fucking stole from me!" I hissed. I wanted to yell at her, but I didn't want to wake up Gob, Nova, or Nova's Johnnie.

"I apologize," she said, frowning. "Truthfully, I was quite drunk. And that Jericho fellow suggested... well, it certainly wasn't one of my brightest moments, I'll admit."

The Wastes had crept into her eyes. Her face was closed, poker-faced and guarded, just like every Washingtonian. A little too enigmatic for my tastes.

"Your apologies can suck my taint. I want some fucking compensation, or I'll have to get _creative_."

She continued to stare at me impassively. She drew a purse from a heavy pack by the door. She sailed it to me with an underhanded toss and I caught it deftly with my free hand. It was heavy, stiffly packed with what most would automatically assume were caps.

"That's three. Would you like to count it?"

"I should," I said, "as I'm sure you put slag in the middle so it'd feel heftier."

Her eyes narrowed and her eyebrows raised. "I honestly was hoping we could start over again, get off on the right foot—"

"Where's my knife?" I growled.

She hesitated before she reached into her pack again and withdrew my pa's knife, the leather scabbard darkened in places with what I could only assume was blood. She set it on the little table beside her.

"No hard feelings, sir?" she asked. The 'sir' did not sound mocking. She'd given me my knife and three hundred caps, roughly triple the net worth of what she'd stolen. So why did I feel like I was the one getting fucked over? I had so many questions I wanted to shoot her with. Why had she fucked me if she already had the info about her dad? Did she rob Andy Stahl as well as myself? Was it just a coincidence that she'd shown up not five days after the attack—or was she a carrion bird looking to pick through the gore? But it didn't feel like the right time. Not yet.

"Truce. But I've got my eye on you. Pull any shit like that again and I might not be so friendly."

"I heard you might have coffee," she said softly, changing the subject. Her voice was the same, if not slightly cooler. I should have kicked her out on her ass, but she wouldnt've come if she didn't have something to offer, or had something to trade.

I went behind the counter, holstering my gun as I went. "Hot or cold?"

"Cold would be fine, I think."

Audrey hobbled rather than walked to the bar, and it was then that I realized that she wasn't wearing shoes. Her mud-encrusted boots rested by the door. Her feet were all blistered and bloody, wrapped in rags. The Wasteland was hard on the feet, that was for damned sure, and it had stolen all of her lithe, sinuous grace. She gingerly sat down at a table with visible relief. Despite her obvious discomfort, her posture was perfectly tense and ramrod straight, nicked and scratched hands folded demurely in front of her.

I set out two chipped mugs and filled them with last night's coffee, still cold from the fridge, and then I took the seat at her right.

"Tell me what you've been up to," I said.

So, she started first with Three Dog and the radio dish. My fists balled up on the metal surface, the veins popping up the backs of my hands, as she recounted the events of the last few days.

"If I ever see that bastard, I'll rend him limb from fucking limb!" I snarled.

"It wasn't that bad," she said, but smiled a little, apparently pleased. "I don't think the super mutants can see especially well in the dark. I got to most of them before they saw me, or avoided them entirely."

Yeah, I'd slept with her, sure—I think she might even have had a fair time of it, too—but I didn't send her out into the very heart of the war on the Mall, all alone, to get some damned dish out of some mutie-infested hellhole. And she'd gotten nothing—absolutely _nothing_—to show for it but yet another rapidly cooling lead. All of this was said with a degree of nonchalance that I don't think I could have managed, had it've been my ass on the line.

"You could have been killed. Ten times over. You're lucky to be alive," I said, and she just fucking _shrugged_.

"That seems to be the way of it out here."

"You risked your life, and he didn't give you shit."

"I got as much out of him as I did out of you," she said with a wry little smirk. I wasn't exactly sure what she meant by that. I wasn't sure I wanted to know. "It's not as if you knew what was waiting for me in Springvale. I could have been killed there as well."

"But he knew—_knew_—that the odds were fucking excellent that you'd ended up in some mutie's lunch bag."

"I may not subscribe to the whole 'fight the good fight' rhetoric, but the station is a rather valuable asset. And Three Dog does seem to know a great deal about the Wasteland—and doesn't mind sharing it for free, mind you."

"Fine. Whatever." I let the matter drop. "He seems to know a great deal about _you, _most of all. Doesn't mind sharing that over the air, either. Seems to think you're some sort of saint."

She smiled. "He does go on."

"But he doesn't cover everything about you, does he?"

"He's not omniscient, no."

"Well, it just so happens that I've heard a little tid-bit that he's neglected to broadcast."

"Oh?"

"You've been busy slaving."

Her face blanched ever so slightly beneath the dirt; if I hadn't been watching for it, I'd never have noticed. The mug in her delicate hand trembled, paused, and then she sipped her coffee. Swallowed.

"From whom?" she asked innocently.

"Someone that'd rather not be named under these circumstances, I think. He said he spied you outside of Paradise raking in caps hand over fist."

She didn't deny or confirm, just looked at me levelly, eyebrows raised. _So what?_ her flat eyes said, mocking me, daring me to pass judgment on her. I pinned her with the full force of my glare.

"Woman, this is _my_ fucking town," I rumbled, voice low, "You pull any of that shit here in Megaton and you'll be blowing the barrel of my gun and kissing Satan's arse faster than you can scream!"

She blinked, startled, and then there was the old Audrey—the girl that had wandered in lost and bewildered, just looking for a finger pointed in the right direction. Her eyes were suddenly readable, open. I could see her soul again. She scowled at me unhappily, pouting, insolent.

"Right, because if there's going to be any exploitation in this town, you're going to be the one pulling the strings," she said, her fancy, nonchalant airs burned away, sweat beginning to bead on her forehead.

"Try me, and see how far that cheek gets you." We glared at each other, a smoldering battle of wills, but she blinked and looked away, gulping down some coffee. I think she'd given up out of weariness, mostly; she didn't strike me as the type of person that backed down from anything.

"Relax. I mostly only collar raiders, people that attack me first," she said softly.

"'Mostly?'"

"I've also captured a few disreputable slavers."

"'Disreputable slavers,' right," I said, and laughed humorlessly. "Kid, you might want to consider another career."

"Did I say it was a career? No. Just a bit of supplemental income."

"All the same, that road'll kill you."

"Concern for me?" she asked, high-pitched, mockingly sweet.

"Pity," I said, and that smug little smile was wiped from her lips. "That isn't any kind of a life. And it's sure as shit not what your daddy wanted for you—I'd put money on it."

A muscle twitched in her jaw. I think I struck a nerve. "It's something I'm reasonably good at. And the money is substantial."

"Is that so? What do you take in?"

"Two-fifty," she said coolly, like that was supposed to impress me. Christ, dumb fucking kid didn't even know what a decent cut was.

"And of those you collar, about how many make it to Paradise Falls after you strip their guns from them?"

She considered this, and her mouth bowed down slightly. "About... one in three."

"And when you lose them, Grouse gives you a new collar out of the kindness of his benevolent heart, does he?"

"They're about a hundred."

"So out of three slaves, you take about a hundred cap loss. And how many times have they tried to kill you even after you collar them?" Judging from the way her lips compressed into a thin, colorless line, I figured it'd been more than once.

"At least I let them leave alive," she said grimly. "Most people would just shoot the miscreants on sight. I consider bondage to be their penance for causing others so much misery."

"Oh, you can spin it however you'd like, lass—whatever lets you sleep at night. Wasteland justice is well and good and all, but does it not occur to you that your own little brand of law and order is making all the wrong people a fucking mint?"

The furious way she bit her lips along with her burning cheeks was all the answer I needed. I realized with a little shock that, unlike the shit with Andy, I took no pleasure in baiting her or yanking her down from her ivory tower.

"Unless you get off on making other people's lives a living hell, enjoy getting shot at, and relish the idea of dragging your reputation through the mud, it's a shitty business." I fixed her with my tried and true glare. "And the slavers ain't cute and cuddly like me. They'll turn on you at the first opportunity, if the people you're hunting don't kill you sooner. You're going to get stupid, or too cocky, or too slow, and you'll end up either dead or collared yourself. And I don't think I need to tell you what happens to pretty young girls that get collared."

"What I am trying to accomplish takes some significant financing, Mr. Moriarty, and there is a distinct lack of charity out here, in case you haven't noticed."

"There's other work you could do to make money." She made a noise that might have been a snort if it had come from anyone else but her.

"What, whore myself out like Nova?" she asked sullenly, derisively, and it was all I could do to keep from smacking her.

How dare she? How fucking _dare_ Audrey try to debase Nova—a hard working professional preforming such a vital service? Hell, Nova was _miles_ more respectable than a lower-than-shit slaver. I kept my tongue and hand in check, though, reminding myself that despite the month out in hell, the new rifle, the battle-scarred armor and the pretty ten-dollar words—she was still a dumb fuck teenager that didn't know he her asshole from a hole in the ground, for Christssake.

"I never said whoring. You're smart—or at least you seemed like it, when I first met you. You obviously know your way around locks and computers; there're scav crews that come through here that would take you on, or you could sign on with one of the caravans. Doc Hoff needs a new merc."

"You certainly don't seem to mind the benefits of slavery," she said, sounding quarrelsome and churlish, glaring at me moodily over the brim of her cup.

"What, Gob?"

"Yes, _Gob_," she said, a sneer in her voice.

"You ever hear the old adage 'chains are earned, never forced?'" Azzie was ever so fond of that one.

"And what menial, trivial crime did he commit to deserve being under the thumb of the likes of you?"

"Got high as a fucking bird on Psycho and raped a young woman in Rivet City."

She blanched and drew back, eyes wide as saucers. "No!" she gasped.

"You keep that in mind the next time someone starts in on that 'oh, woe is Gob' bullshit," I said grimly.

She considered this, forehead lined, incredulous. "I don't believe you."

"No? Well, the whole thing got hushed up pretty quick, out of respect for the family. Only a handful of people know. But you can ask Danvers why ghouls aren't welcome in Rivet City anymore, not even to trade. She can give you all the sordid details, but don't be surprised if she starts getting all weepy on you. Or, hell, ask your bosom buddy Mr. Jones; he's the one I bought that corpse off of. Nowadays they'll just kill you for rape or theft, but years ago they'd sell you to slavers for compensation to the offended party. It's not done much, nowadays, which is a shame if you ask me. Shooting someone is easier, I suppose, but there's less profit in it."

"He seems like such a pleasant fellow, though. I can't imagine him doing something so... reprehensible."

I considered this. "He's a decent enough sort, I suppose," I said begrudgingly, "and I doubt a day goes by that he doesn't remember and regret. But that doesn't change what he did. When I bought him, he had the biggest chem monkey on his back that I'd ever seen; took the better part of a month to get him cleaned up. I almost asked for my money back."

"But all of that—because of an influx of chemicals? Just... how?"

"Chems change people, makes 'em crazy, stupid and reckless. Doubtless you've seen that first hand by now, many raiders as you've encountered. Rots your brain; I'm surprised Gob didn't go feral. I don't suppose I need to tell you to keep this to yourself, do I? The last thing I need is some bleeding heart goodie-goodie killing my employee."

She nodded, crimped her lips together and said nothing, not looking me in the eyes. She pushed her empty cup towards me with the tip of her finger. I poured her more coffee.

"Why are you even here? I thought you were out looking for your dad."

"I am," she said, lacing her fingers together and resting her chin on them, elbows propped on the counter. "It's taking longer than expected. I think I have his location now, or at least know where to look, some hidden Vault-Tec facility out west. But there's very little in the way of maps; the one in my Pip-Boy is rather inaccurate, being as that it was programmed before the War. I keep having to update it manually. It's slow going."

I nodded. What I would consider the Capital Wasteland is not that big of a place, but it's all rough, uneven ground, treacherous, a place where even the very earth itself reaches up to kill.

"What do you need from me?"

"A few stimpaks, a place to sleep, soap, and some clean water for a bath."

"You good for the caps?"

"Of course. But maybe you're willing to accept some other favor?" She swiveled the bar stool with a squeak and leaned towards me, dangerously close.

"Such as?"

She licked her lips and kissed me.

Sweet _Jesus_, I knew I'd missed her, I'd just forgotten how fiercely. I reached up and ran my fingers through her short hair, marveling at the silken texture of it, and under the stink of the gunpowder, dust and sweat-stained leather, I could still smell traces of some sort of loveliness that hadn't yet been completely erased, something that was just inherently Audrey. It was a bad idea. Maybe the _worst_ of ideas and, God, I hadn't been so fucking reckless since my twenties, but she was—she was _there, _and she was ready to go, and she was touching me, the tip of her tongue pressing experimentally against my lips, breath hitching when I pressed my hand against her breast, her back arching, her hand sliding up from my knee to the inside of my thigh and creeping ever further north and it'd been a month since I'd had _anything_ and I just wanted—no, _needed_—

A shriek of bedsprings and thumps came from upstairs, then sounds of someone swinging their legs out of bed and getting their boots on. Fucking _Gob_. The one morning he had an urge to get up early. I was going to kill that little fucker someday, and damn the expense!

Well... shit; it wasn't his fault, I suppose. Really, I should have been grateful to him to an extent, since the distraction made me reexamine the situation. Audrey was the same girl that I'd taken up to my room that night a month earlier—thief, swindler, and now a slaver. A Wastelander. After all the shit she'd pulled with me, I'd have been safer trying to fuck a mirelurk.

I drew back quickly, and her eyes fluttered back open, lips still parted. She looked hurt as all hell, like I'd smacked her across the face, and for a moment, I wondered if I'd thought too harshly of her. I wondered if she'd been missing me too... but no. No, that was probably just the wistful thinking of a lonely, horny old man.

"A hundred up front," I said, "You can pay whatever else you owe when you leave."

"Of course," she said, and got out another leather purse that jingled with caps. Her voice was frosty, conveying what her lips did not: _well, fuck you, too, asshole._

"GOB!" I bellowed, loud enough to make Audrey jump, and hopefully loud enough to wake the two lovebirds in the rented room.

There was a shuffling upstairs, and then a weary, disembodied voice rasped, "Yes, sir?"

"Draw some clean water for a bath in the ladies room!"

"While I have my purse out," said Audrey, in a calm, sweet voice that was nonetheless malevolent and cold, "how many caps is it going to take to keep you from spreading the word about my extracurricular funding?"

"That depends; how much is it worth to you?"

Audrey's entire body was painfully tense, her eyes twin chips of cold obsidian. She waited for me to name the price. She'd have paid anything, I'd wager. I could have ruined her; I had the bucket of tar and Hoff had the feathers. A word to the Good Doctor and he'd spread the word on down the line, if he hadn't already. She'd be banished from what passed for polite society; there wouldn't be a decent person in the Wastes that would trade with her and she'd be sentenced to consorting with the lowest dregs of society and forced to keep making her living at slaving—if you could call slaving living. But then I thought of what James would think.

"Tell you what: you knock it the fuck off and throw the rest of your collars in the river, and we'll say no more about it."

She stared at me in disbelief. "You'd... why?"

"You were the one that wanted a fresh start."

And Audrey gave me the most heart-warming, genuine smile I'd seen all week.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

After I set Gob to his tasks, put on a shirt, got Nova's Johnie kicked out and moved on so Audrey could get herself situated (after politely declining Nova's services), I headed outside for a smoke. Just as expected, the sky was a dull, heavy, malevolent grey that seemed low enough to reach up and touch. I shuddered a little, despite the heat. The clouds reminded me of my native Ireland, that miserable little shit-hole of an island where the black rain that blew in from the sea ate through wood and steel, killed what little vegetation there was and turned men into monsters.

I lit up, leaned against the railing, scanned the town below. Not much activity yet. The clamor of pots and pans echoed out of the Brass Lantern. I felt that pang of guilt again as I wondered who was doing the cooking, what with Jenny dead in the ground with one of my bullets in her brain. Ah, must have been Leo, because Andy was sat at the outside counter, cigarette drooping from his lips, arms crossed tightly over his chest, staring into the middle distance but seeing nothing. The Confessor was lying face-up in the pool of water surrounding the bomb, mercifully silent for once, and the shuffling, half-asleep settlers either paid him no heed or threw him a cap or two—out of sympathy more than any warm feeling of charity for his cult, I imagine.

I felt someone staring at me and I looked across the gap. Simms gazed down from his own balcony, coffee cup in hand. He looked strangely naked and vulnerable without his hat and duster. Our eyes met. I nodded to him and he reluctantly returned the gesture, but still watched me warily. He was probably thinking I was plotting something along the lines of world-domination, or that I was at the very least waiting for some hapless fuck to wander under me just as I spat or tapped ash on them or some such childish nonsense, but, truth is, I just liked the view.

There were a lot of memories for me in Megaton. There—that big sheet of metal near the water plant; I'd helped Leslie put up on the barrier after some shithead gun-crazy merc (Stocky's predecessor) got too careless with a missile launcher. God, had to be ten years back now; first and last time I'd heard her swear like a shipwrecked sailor. She got mauled to death by a deathclaw the very next day. Where there was the Brass Lantern was, there used to be just an empty space where we—Magruder, Hensley, Walter, Johnson, Rosie and I—had bonfires and swapped stories, got shit-faced, and dared each other to chuck our empties at the bomb.

All my old friends were dead and gone, with the exception of Walter. The bus had had at least twenty different occupants before Nathan and Manya, the bloodstains of a few of them discretely hidden beneath furniture and a carpet of trash. The house Lucy was in used to belong to the Smith family; a numerous, clannish, God-fearing lot that headed south to the ruins of Charlottesville to see what sort of living they could reap there. The house Simms occupied used to belong to my father; in what was once my room, there was _Colin + Jamie_ scratched into the metal sheeting with a crude heart outline. Ah, pa gave me hell for that one; the collarbone he broke still pains me once in a while, even after all these years.

Years. Years and years and _years, _on and on. The faces changed, came and went, familiar but strange all the same, like God was running out of extras for the movie my life had become. I watched a crusty-eyed settler pass below me and for a moment I could have sworn was Guy Brinks, if Brinks hadn't been dead for twelve years. Jesus, but I fucking hated foul weather; it got me reminiscing, made me—sentimental.

"Rather dull morning."

I couldn't help the flinch—I hadn't heard anyone approach. I glanced over to my left; it was the man that had shown up at the saloon the night after the attack, the man that I'd shoved to the floor in my mad dash for the toilet and witnessed Gob haul me up to my room by the arm pits like an unwieldy sack of shit. There was a faint smile on his lips but his eyes were unreadable and flat behind the smoked glasses. In his grey suit, he seemed somehow ephemeral, emerging from the gloom. I felt uncommonly nervous.

"Sorry our first meeting was less than pleasant; you caught me at an awkward moment," I said, not out of any sort of remorse, but rather to fill the chasm of uncomfortable silence.

"Happens to the best of us from time to time. Think nothing of it."

I didn't. "I don't think we've been introduced," I said, "the name's Colin Moriarty. Mr...?"

" Burke. Call me Mr. Burke." Burke... _Burke_; now where in the hell had I heard that name before? He offered his and and we shook; his palms were cool and dry. "Owner and proprietor of the saloon of the same appellation, if I'm not mistaken. Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Moriarty."

"Does it now?" I slid my hand down to rest on my hip, inches away from the butt of my gun. The move did not go unnoticed; he glanced down, but his faint smile did not diminish. He wasn't displaying a piece, but I did see a likely bulge under his suit jacket.

"I sincerely hope I did not put you at ill-ease; not my intention in the least."

"I'd take it as a kindness, then, if you were to state your business and ease my fucking concern." There was just something about the guy that made me jumpy and put my teeth on edge. "I don't imagine you're a merc."

"Oh, no, no, no. Nothing so vulgar; I'm a real-estate investor."

"A what?"

" I'm here to assess the value of this cess... Megaton, and the surrounding environs."

"So you're here to... see how much the town is worth?"

"Correct," he said with a quirk of the lips. I liked to think that I was a reasonably well-learned man; I could read and write, do figures—even Simms couldn't spell much more than his _name_—but this guy was out pacing me by miles without effort. Everything about Burke just rubbed me the wrong way.

"I'll spare you the trouble of investigating; unless you want booze, poon, or have an overwhelming desire to commune with the brahmin, Megaton isn't worth the scrap that holds it together."

"I would think, as the possessor of substantial properties within this budding metropolis, you would place a higher value on your holdings."

"It varies from day to day, depending on the amount of bullshit that goes along with running an operation here."

"I suppose a place like this is not without its tribulations as well as charms." Burke leaned a hip against the railing, looking out over the town. Confessor Cromwell, still soaking wet, had roused himself and was starting up his daily diatribe. Burke watched for a moment, some vague expression on his face that I couldn't quite identify.

"So, you all worship a live, unexploded atomic warhead?"

" Yeah, but not religiously; it's more of a Christmas and Easter sort of thing."

He grinned at that, and there was a dry chuckle, but the warmth didn't reach his eyes.

"I would think that dwelling in the shadow of such a endangerment would make for a rather tense atmosphere, but no one but this Sheriff Simms seems especially concerned."

"Most people are of a mind that if it was going to go off, it would have already done so."

"And are you of that opinion, sir?" The inquisition in his eyes made me all the more jittery. I got the impression that he was probing for something, trying to feel me out, and I didn't care for it.

"No. But there's not a damn thing I can do about it, and I've got enough shit on my plate without having to worry about nuclear annihilation on the side." I looked him in the eye. "Now, if there's something you _want_, spill it to Gob and let me have at least a one moment to myself today, would you please?"

"I admire your frankness," he said dryly, "I've come to inquire about your property by the aforementioned bomb. I plan to stay in Megaton for an indeterminate length of time; after several deplorable evenings at the common house, I would prefer to keep my own quarters."

I drew on my cig, mulling it over. "Renting or buying?"

" Ownership would be preferable; I despise renting."

"You wouldn't happen to be representing a certain little shit-kicker named Andy Stahl?"

"Whom?" I jerked a thumb at Stahl, who hadn't moved a muscle since I'd come out. He was still staring into nothing. Burke peered at him, seemingly disinterested. "No. I've yet to make his acquaintance."

"Seven thousand," I said. "And if I find out you're planning on renting to Stahl or setting up any sort of business that runs contrary to my own, I get everything back."

I expected him to make a fuss, bitch about the price, try to haggle and then stomp off in a huff when he figured out that I wouldn't be swayed and then leave me to smoke my cigarette in fucking peace, but—

"Very well, I acquiesce. Write up the papers and have your man deliver them to my bed at the common house and you shall have your payment in full."

I stared at him, dumbstruck at the readiness of his agreement, awed that he would carry around that many caps. Should have asked for more.

"Well, er... Pleasure doing business then," I said, "I'll send Gob over directly."

"Excellent. I may have an even more enterprising business opportunity, if you're interested." Even more money? Jesus, this guy must have been fucking _loaded_—

"I'm listening," I said automatically, but my mind was racing—_seven thousand caps_. God almighty. Maybe I'd see if I could expand a little, get Simms to agree to having the rim wall pushed back a little further, or I could see put a third floor on the saloon—I'd been looking to put in a pool table for _years_, maybe put in a few more rooms, make a proper hotel, maybe even—

"Have you ever considered transferring your establishment to a more prepossessing location?"

I came back to myself. "You mean move out of Megaton?"

"That is what I mean. I could help you achieve such a thing, if you'd like to assist me. I happen to represent certain interests southwest of here at a premiere location. There are still openings..."

He went on, but all I could hear was the blood singing in my ears. I gripped the railing hard enough that my knuckles went white, and I could feel heat prickle my face.

"And would these certain interests involve any back-stabbing, skeezy, limey old cocksuckers by the name of 'Steve?'" I growled.

Burke was silent for a moment. He looked me over, trying to gauge my reaction.

"I was... unaware that you were already acquainted with Alistair Tenpenny."

"Acquainted well enough that I'd sooner fuck him to death with a baseball bat than sell any agent of his _my_ property!"

"We had an agreement, sir," he said, low and dangerous.

"We've got nothing but words, nothing on paper—which means we don't have shit."

"I am not some lowlife, degenerate vermin that you can cow with vile words and threats of mutilation," he seethed, "and I am no man to be trifled with!"

"And to that end, we've got something in common." His lip curled as if he doubted me. He broke eye contact, drew in a deep breath, held it, and let it out again, shrugging and rolling his shoulders in an attempt to release some of the tension.

"Perhaps we could try this again; would an additional three thousand caps assuage whatever misgivings you hold for my employer?"

Ten thousand. Ten fucking _thousand_ caps. It was more than the saloon took in in a year. He'd have to bring it in a footlocker or a crate—it might take two men to carry. Ten thousand was the most I'd ever see in one place at one time.

I sure as hell didn't build my little slice of Megaton dwelling on the rights and wrongs of my actions, but there were some things, I hated to admit, that were worth more than caps. And Moriartys hold onto a fucking grudge; it sustains us and keeps us going when nothing else will. My father was a real asshole, a bastard on an almost unrivaled scale, but it wasn't 'til long after he was dead that I'd realized that he'd been a man under enormous strain, that he only tried to take care of me the best way he knew how, toughen me up so that I'd have a fighting chance in the world. Despite the snide and belittling remarks, the screaming, the ferocious beatings, the time he'd made me kill that guy... I'd loved him. I knew he'd flip over in his shallow grave if he were to hear that I'd given in to a man that had fucked him over on such a grand scale, even if it'd been more than forty years.

"No deal. For you, the lease is five hundred a week," I said. It was ten times what I'd charged Roy to live there.

"A sum tantamount to robbery!" he cried.

"Then fuck off and see what sort of other accommodation you get."

"Perhaps I shall," he said icily, making like he was going to turn around and go off in a huff.

"'Course, town bylaws stipulate that for an outsider to buy or rent in town from anyone other than me, he has to be approved by Simms," I said, and looked back across the gap to where the Sheriff in question was still watching us with a decidedly tense posture. "And I have a feeling you two have already had a chat. _And_ I'd be willing to bet that he's decided that he's rather see your throat cut than have you living in town."

"I find your manner childish and tedious," he hissed, his face dangerously pale. "Your obstinance will not interfere with my employer's project! Had you vision as well as sight you would see in me not a man, but an instrument for a glorious future—"

"_Fuck_ Tenpenny and _fuck_ any of his future plans!"

Burke crossed his arms over his chest, defiant, one fist butted just a fraction of an inch within the confines his suit jacket.

"You cannot fuck the future, sir, the future fucks you."

With that, he turned on his heel and stalked down the ramp, his dress loafers making a horrible clatter on the metal grates. Goddamn it, I hated to let someone else have the last word, but I'm not stupid, thank Christ for small favors. I could smell the danger on him, and (when sober, anyway) I could tell how many buttons I could push before the situation got out of control. That little hand placement of his own had put his grip awfully close to whatever weapon he had under his suit jacket—and Simms just got so terribly upset and flustered whenever I shot a man in public. I was pleased to be seeing the ass end of him, though, and hopefully that be the last of him and the last mention of Steve-Fucking-Tenpenny for a while. I finished my smoke and headed back inside, ready to face another day.

Simms showed up an hour later, livid.

"From Megaton's newest tenant," he rumbled, and shoved a bag into my chest. It was three thousand caps—six weeks' rent.

***

Late that evening, Gob showed up in my office, not bothering to knock—an offense I would have slapped him for, but the sight of his remaining skin flushed deep red puzzled me into staying my hand. I've never seen that particular color on him before, not even when he was coming down from Psycho.

"You need to make a cocktail for someone," he said, his voice trembling.

"And what, if I may inquire, is wrong with your own two fucking hands?"

"He doesn't want me to make it—says he'd sooner 'drink from the toilet than accept a beverage prepared by an—an—" he struggled with the word, "'—an abomination'," he spat, his ever present self-loathing creeping into his voice. There was the expression of outwitted, dumb animal hurt mingled with overwhelming sense of dread. I knew the feeling.

"Burke. That bastard," I growled. I think that actually alleviated some of the pain in his eyes. Now, God knows I'm certainly no great advocate for ghoul rights and equality—but Gob was _mine_, bought and paid for, and if anyone was going to make my property feel like shit, it was going to be me.

I stormed out, Gob trailing me at heel. It was busy, but I had no trouble spotting Burke. Burke was sitting on what I considered my best easy chair, an extremely rare suitcase computer terminal on his lap powered by a jerry-rigged car battery set between his feet. He did not look up from his tapping when I approached.

"Well? What the fuck do you want?" He still did not look up. The typing did not cease.

"Ghoul, tell the barkeep what I require," he said, not looking at Gob either.

"Oh, so _now_ who's being fucking childish?"

He finally stopped. For the first time, I realized that that bar was dead silent. I felt the eyes of a dozen patrons on my back. Burke moved is hands slowly, one pulling back his suit jacket to reveal his sidearm in a shoulder holster—some shiny, high-end, automatic affair lengthened by a silencer, the perfect accessory for today's shifty, shitty, up-and-coming goon—while the other hand pulled out a thick, tight roll of pre-War paper money from the suit's inside pocket and tapped it down on the table beside him. It had probably been worth a grand two hundred years ago, but what was now worth roughly seventy caps.

He went back to typing. I stared at the money for a moment, silently fuming, before I snatched it and stuffed it in my pocket.

_God, I am just such a fucking whore._

"What did the asshole want?" I barked at Gob once we were back behind the counter.

"He said he wanted a 'Rob Roy,'" said Gob uncertainly, "Do you know what that is?"

"Yeah. I hope the uppity fucker likes his with extra scotch, 'cause that's all I have; that crate of vermouth is two years gone. Maybe I've got a little battery acid somewhere though...." I opened up the register and shoved a fistful of caps at him. "Run down to the Doc's for some ice. And if you happen to see Nova, tell her I don't mind her catting around, but I want her back bright and early, as soon as the room's free again."

Gob just stood there for a moment, blinking at me, remaining muscle pulled into a vaguely perplexed expression.

"So you're... you're just going to take that from him, sir?" My arm twitched and he instinctively drew back, hands up, cringing, ready to defend himself should my fist fly.

"Are you suggesting you know a better way to run my Goddamned business?"

He looked back down at his feet, crestfallen, and mumbled, "No, sir. Sorry, sir," and went off for the ice bucket.

"Zombie's got a point, Colin," slurred Jericho from his usual bar stool, a relatively amiable drunk (for once), "You ain't turnin' pussy on me, are ya?"

"That son-of-a-bitch gave me three thousand caps today for rent," I told him. The number registered in Jericho's eyes as shock. "He's loaded, so I plan to put up with his shit and get his booze—so long as I can fleece the fuck while I do it."

"Right on, right on," mumbled Jericho, raising his glass a little in a silly little half-toast before downing his glass of whiskey. "How you gonna go about it?"

"You casting doubt on my abilities?"

"Ha! Nah, 'course not. You always got some kinda fuckin' scam going that's makin' you a mint; I just might want a little of that action."

It was all bullshit. All the thoughts I'd had concerning Burke and Tenpenny had mostly just been dark and bloody, but without particulars. It did sooth a little of my wounded pride, though, the talk of working Burke over.

"When I've squeezed him dry—I'm going to send him back to his boss in a fucking suit case," I said with a sly smile, "Might be you I would need to deliver the package."

Jericho snorted and rose to his feet, wobbling. "Ain't no fuckin' bag man," he said, then turned and staggered for the door. Without paying for his drink. What a dick. Well, no use trying to get it out of him, better that he went quiet. I'd get the money later.

Movement off to my right—it was _her._ Audrey. She'd hit the pillow and slept for a good sixteen hours. She descended the stairs like a belle at a ball, her armor shed in favor of some nearly grime-free pre-War dress that hugged all the right places without looking like a tart, her calloused hands hidden by some once-white kid gloves. Her hair was glossy and clean, trimmed up more evenly, and somehow something that had once looked coarse and butch suddenly accentuated the graceful length of her neck and the fine shape of her jaw. Exposure to the harsh sun hadn't uglied her up, but rather had bronzed her skin, the overall effect radiant. She still wore her vault boots and arm computer for lack of anything more elegant.

She met my eyes and smiled graciously; I hadn't realized I'd been staring. She came to stand before me on the other side of the bar.

"Mr. Moriarty."

"A little soap and you brush up right nice," I said.

"Did I just detect a complement?"

"I suppose you could see it as one, if you squint," I said, returning her even brighter smile, "Sleep well? Staying through tonight?"

"Yes, and yes. I certainly hope so, anyway—" She paused, smile wavering, looking back over my shoulder. I followed her gaze and found that sallow fuck Burke, his approach masked by the noise of the other bar-goers.

" Pardon me for intruding, Mr. Moriarty, but you simply _must_ introduce me to this exquisite young woman," said Burke, not sparing me a glance.

Jesus Christ, I thought my blood was going to boil. "She's got ears and a mouth, don't she? Why not just fucking ask her yourself?" I ground out.

"Audrey," she said, and held out her hand. She ignored the furious glare I shot at her. When Burke's engulfed hers, I saw an electric spark warm his icy eyes.

"Delighted; I'm Mr. Burke," he said, releasing her hand, removing his hat and taking a stiff bow; I was thrilled to see a palm-sized bald spot gleaming on the crown of his head.

"How do you do?" she asked, her smile renewed. A blush graced her cheeks and her dark eyes sparkled.

"Very well, now that I find myself in more civilized company. I am newly arrived in camp."

"I have discovered that if you make the right acquaintances, one can find Megaton most agreeable," she said with a glance to me that I don't think Burke caught.

"I have found only one whom I'd like to make the acquaintance of. Perhaps you would like to take in the air with me, if your decorum permits?" I thought I saw something flit in her eyes, a little flash of something so scant that I might not have seen it, had I not been looking for it: avarice.

"It very well may," she said. She stood before me, silent, not meeting my eyes, as Burke retrieved his computer. They turned as one for the door. When I saw Burke offer his arm to Audrey and she obligingly put her hand through the crook to rest on his forearm, I thought I was going to scream.

I couldn't fucking stand it. I fled to the office, slamming the door behind me, and pile-drove a fist into the nearest wall with a crash, and the pain that radiated up my arm was grimly satisfying. I hissed and gripped onto the shelf for dear life, breathing hard, so fucking pissed off that the red was creeping in. Fucking _bastard!_ Come into my town and start throwing his money around, make me look like a fucking broke-dick in my own Goddamn bar, chat up Audrey, try to steal _my_ fucking—

What? My woman? My... lover? God, I hate that over the top, romanticized word. Makes me gag a little. Fuck buddy? Yeah, I guess, but even that had to be rounded up—four or five awkward encounters, one of which I'd aimed a gun at her head, do not a friendship make. We were nothing more than tentative allies that had a little fun going on the side, once upon a time.

She wasn't my anything, and it was damned unhealthy to regard her as anything different.

I waited a few moments. Flexed my hand and grimaced; wouldn't be surprised if I'd broken something. Took a few more deep breaths, smoothed back my hair, and opened the door.

There was someone couching behind the bar, the same purple-mohawked little shit that I'd almost killed the night of the attack, her hand firmly entrenched in the register's till. Our eyes locked. Her face was white.

_CRACK!_ She jerked and suddenly there was a new gory hole in her shoulder, cash register crashing to the floor with her in a rain of caps and a flutter of paper bills and then and she was screaming and crying, scrabbling to her feet, more screams and yells—not all of them hers—and then she was lost in a crowd of people that were making a run for the door, drinks and smokes forgotten, some of the meeker ones giving me terrified glances, the veterans not even bothering to look back.

I looked down. The gun was in my hand. I stared at it quizzically, feeling strangely numb. Huh. I hadn't even realized I'd drawn. Shit, must have been more upset then I thought—normally, people I shoot don't need a second bullet.

I heard rapid footsteps on the catwalk. I looked up, expecting to see Simms again—secretly hoping it was the vaultie—but it was Gob, wide-eyed and startled. His shirt was speckled and his skin had a curious look of vitality to it. The bucket of ice was covered in a towel. He peeked in, glanced at the gun in my hand and hesitated. We were alone, the bar silent; I could hear the _pat-pat-pat_ of plump raindrops on the catwalk and the increasing drone from above. The roof was going to start leaking soon. Perfect. Just fucking _perfect_.

"You waiting for a hand-written invitation?" He slipped in, quietly closed the door behind him and made for the fridge. I looked down at the floor in front of me; it was spotted with blood, covered with caps and rumpled money. "When you get done with that, clean up this shit, then get the Abraxo and the mop," I said, holstering my gun, wiping the sweat from my face with the back of my wrist. With a weary sigh, I started getting out the buckets and setting them out to catch the rain.

A/N _"You cannot fuck the future, sir, the future fucks _you_."_ Yeah, I'll admit it: I stole that line from Deadwood—It's just so... _perfect_. I often fall in love with turns of phrase, and that show it just full of 'em. And full of over the top cussin'—the adoption of which into my daily vocabulary is a daily struggle.

As always, a big thanks for all the kind reviews, and to Kimmae, my ever so patient beta.


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N: I apologize for the shortness of this chapter—and the infrequency of my updates. I've had to take on a lot of responsibilities—like I'm some kind of an ADULT or something. Can you believe that shit? Anyway, this is kinda Chapter 12, part I. The whole thing would have just been too long. And I'm sort of... well, not finished with it yet. Anyway, on with the reading!_

Chapter 12

The hammering rain had gotten me to sleep sooner than I thought it would have, but I was up bright and early. Walter came by in short order to collect the water buckets for the treatment plant; the water wouldn't have been much use to me, anyway, as irradiated as it was. Only fit for flushing the toilet. The ground had already sponged up the last night's rain; it didn't look as if it'd been wet at all. In a few weeks there'd be a few sprouts of desperate, brown mutie things that were somehow not quite plants, and they'd attempt to bud up from the cracks and out from under rocks all across the Wastes, but they'd die soon after, baked by the sun or plucked from the ground by indiscriminate brahmin and mole rats. More obvious would be the blowflies that would more than likely storm the town in the next couple of days.

I opened up to let in one or two barflies, and then set about making coffee. Something had put me in a pretty good mood. I even caught myself whistling as I boiled a bit of water on the stove and set about grinding the beans.

"Is that for me?" asked Lucy West as I poured a cup. She eyed the cup a little wantonly as I tapped in a little sugar and a dash of brahmin milk.

"Help yourself," I said and gestured to the press. "Fixings are extra."

I headed upstairs. I was already envisioning the look of delight on the vaultie's face, that gracious smile and the light dancing in her eyes when I presented her with freshly brewed coffee. The door to the rented room was ajar. Unable to resist, I peeked in through the crack it afforded.

The woman lying there on the bed sure as shit wasn't Audrey.

"What in the hell are you doing here?" I demanded.

Nova flinched and her eyelids fluttered. She opened one baleful, bloodshot eye to glare at me, made a noise that was half moan, half sigh before shutting her eye again and curled up in an even tighter fetal position.

"I _work_ here," she growled tiredly.

"I meant, where's the girl—the vaultie?"

"Ain't her keeper, Colin," sighed the whore, shrugging her bare shoulders, "wasn't here when I got in. Maybe she moved on."

"All her shit's still here," I commented. Nova must have come back in pretty fucking stoned to have overlooked the rifle, the bindle, and the bits of armor that were stacked and organized neatly in a corner.

"Whatever. Just close the door, would ya? I just wanna... wanna sleep in a real bed for once, 'stead of fucking in it..." She worked herself deeper into the big bed, body relaxing, going slack again beneath the bedding.

I grabbed a corner of the sheet and whisked it away. Nova was naked beneath it. She gasped, outraged. "Do you fuckin' _mind?!_" she howled, sitting up, making no attempt to cover herself. If she thought a pair of tits was going to keep me from reaming her ass out (figuratively speaking), then she had another thing coming.

"Yeah, I mind when you spend the whole damned night huffing Jet and spend the day next moping around like a fucking terminal leukemia patient 'stead of doing your job and earning your keep!"

"Sorry,_ Dad_," she sneered. Oh, Jesus, it was going to be one of those days. She was a cunt to deal with after a Jet crash. "I didn't know Johnnies were busting down the door at eight-in-the-goddamned-morning for a piece of pussy!"

"There's nothing to stop me from throwing your ass back to the dogs and replacing you with a hole in the mattress with a sock in it—I'd get half the caps, but none of the fucking lip!"

"Sock...? Oh! Oh, _hon_," she cooed, "you all bent outta shape 'cause you got a case of the _blues_?"

Vile. Venomous. Bitch.

"Your _arsehole'll_ be bent out of shape after I shove my boot up it, if you're not downstairs in ten, bright-eyed and whore-tailed!"

"Aww, fuck you, Colin!"

I nearly charged her. The only thought that restrained me was the thought of how much revenue I'd lost over the last few weeks on account of her already being beat to shit. And maybe the realization that if I'd started hitting on her then, I might not have been able to stop.

"That really the avenue you want to venture down, princess?" I asked in my best, ominous rumble. I raked Nova over with my eyes, callous and appraising, and I could feel her watching me. Our eyes locked. She must have seen something in my face, perhaps the promise of imminent violence and danger, because she just glared at me sullenly, all pouting lips and smoldering glances before she threw her legs off the bed and snapped up her ruined stockings from the floor. I backed out of the room and started down the stairs to the saloon proper.

"And since you're up, Gobshite," I called to the shadow that had drawn back from the cracked-open door to the room next to mine, "You can start mucking out the toilet you neglected to clean yesterday; it stinks to high fucking heaven in here!"

"...Yessir," muttered Gob.

Nova had distracted me, but once I was downstairs again, I remembered why it had been that I'd checked the room in the first place. So. Audrey wasn't in the room... but all her valuables were still in the rented room. I'd closed last night after the blood'd been mopped up and scrubbed out of the floor. Everything was still locked up and snug when I got up at the ass-crack of dawn. Which meant that Audrey never made it back last night. Which meant...

Oh, shit. Shit, _shit_, _SHIT__—_

Audrey and Burke. Burke would have been the last person she'd been seen with. The last person... If he'd done anything to her—_anything_, if he'd fucking hurt her—if he'd even so much as plucked a single hair from her head, trod a toe, or touch her with any malicious intent, I'd fucking gut shoot him, just so he could think on it while he bled to death. Rent and caps be damned. If Steve Tenpenny's goon thought flashing a little gunmetal would keep me at a distance when the girl was concerned, then he was in for a big fucking surprise—

Gun: full clip, round in the chamber, safety off. Knife: honed so fucking sharp I couldn't test the edge against my fingertip without drawing blood. I stalked outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of the girl, glean some sort of assurance that she was still alright.

But the city below was still intact. The morning didn't look different than any other—no sign that anything was amiss, just people going about their morning; Moira opening up, dressing up the front of her shop with flowers she'd soldered together out of spoons and forks; Walter cussing a another busted pipe; Simms by the gate interrogating what I could only assume was a herder, judging by the tethered brahmin behind him; Good ol' bat-shit crazy Nathan bitching to an exasperated Manya in front of the Brass Lantern, Leo waiting to take their order. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a painfully bright September morning. Business as usual.

My eyes honed in on two figures moseying around the bomb, solitary stones in a swift stream. Settlers and townies passed them with huffs and glares as if they were impeding some urgent fucking business. I squinted against the bright morning sun. One was dressed in grey, the other black. One was Burke, that was easy enough to tell; he was the only hack in town that had the nerve to wear the finer apparel of men long dead.

Audrey wasn't with him. In fact, she was no where to be seen. He was talking to a man, town by the looks of his clothes... shit, it was _Stahl_. They were were strolling together, talking. Rather, Burke was doing most of the talking; the conversation looked mostly one-sided. Andy had his head down, shuffling along, arms crossed so tightly over his chest you'd think he was fearing his heart jumping from his ribs. Burke had a lit cigar, and tendrils of smoke trailed from his animated hand. Even from a distance, I could tell Burke had on the same wheedling, cold smile he'd plastered on when he'd sidled up to me the morning before.

I gripped the railing, scowling down at them. What the fuck were they up to? What sort of business could they possibly have with each other? The fact that they were essentially neighbors now never crossed my mind. The two people I hated most in the town were having some sort of conversation, making some sort of deal, maybe; as far as I could tell, I was the only common factor between them. They were talking about me, I just knew it, even if they cast not a glance my way I knew—just fucking _knew—_it was me they were plotting against. What the fuck else could they possibly be going on about?

A flash of movement to my right, down far below. The door of Burke's new digs eased itself shut without a sound. The air wavered and rippled as if it rose off sun-baked asphalt, then, amazingly, made a concerted effort to drift up the the hill. Towards my joint. I abandoned the coffee on an overturned bucket, then headed down the crater. About halfway down, the air and I passed—and then I turned on it, reaching, and despite my eyes telling me that I was making an ass out of myself, that there was nothing there but heat and dust, an errant mirage, but then my fingers hit paydirt.

"Leaving so soon?" I growled. The air hesitated, then crackled and darkened, and then Audrey was there, Stealth-Boy on her wrist, and I found myself grasping her upper arm. She was wearing the same dress she's worn the night before, only rumpled. She looked exhausted, the hollows beneath her eyes dark and puffy, like she'd been up all night. What she'd been up all might doing was at the forefront of my thoughts and the the notion of her having _anything_ with to do with that asshole turned my fucking stomach.

"Yes. I'm heading back to collect my things so that you may rent out your room again. Will you _please_ let go of my arm?"

"Any reason why you didn't come back last night?" I asked. I don't think I did a very good job of keeping the vehemence out of my voice. She sighed a little. I had a feeling she'd anticipated my mood, hence trying to sneak back in, avoiding me if she could help it.

"It started raining; my Pip-Boy indicated that it was radioactive, so I took to the nearest water-tight shelter, and I was—"

"And you were distracted by dick?" I accused, condemned. Her eyes narrowed to slits and her lip curled in a severely unflattering way.

"And if I _was_," she seethed, "What business would that have been of yours?"

"Just thought you had loftier aims than fucking any dirty old man that homed into your field of vision!" I growled, close to shouting.

And, Jesus Christ, didn't I leave myself wide fucking open on that flank? But that was the thing about Audrey—always polite to the last, she refrained from taking an easy stab even when I'd practically dropped the knife into her waiting palm.

"Remove your hand from my arm—or I will remove it for you," was all she said, in a tone that sounded chillingly Burke-like. I had to remind myself that, for all her apparent gentility and grace, she had cut a bloody swath all the way to the Mall and back again, robbed at least two men, and sent countless people to Paradise with bombs around their necks. Her arm felt like I was gripping a lead pipe with only the thinnest veneer of skin. I let go. She drew back from me and brushed invisible dirt from where I'd touched her. Her skin bore the imprint of my fingers for a moment before fading to tan.

"I made you an offer this time yesterday and you refused—and _rudely,_ at that," she reminded me, voice a low, enraged hiss, black eyes flashing. "You are not my father, nor my lover, nor an employer, nor anyone else that has any sort of say in _any_ of my affairs or has _any_ right to pass judgment on me! Whatever Mr. Burke and I do, behind closed doors, in _private_, as _consenting adults_ is none of your concern!"

She brushed past me, stiff-shouldered, back ram-rod straight despite her obvious fatigue, boots pounding the soil as if she wished it were my face she was stomping on. She was right about our connection—or the lack thereof. I'd admitted as much to myself the night before. Goddamn it, why did she have to be so fucking _right_?

"I was worried about you," I admitted to her retreating back, so softly that I didn't think she could have heard me at all. But she stopped, turned her head to peer at me over her shoulder, guarded, eyes narrowed, looking ready to lay into me... then she sighed and turned back around to face me, arms crossed beneath her breasts.

"You've a fine way of showing it," she said.

"I don't trust that asshole. He works for Tenpenny; fucked my pa over right after they arrived State-side."

"And yet something compelled you to take his caps. Against your better judgment."

"Money was too good," I said, and I could feel my face and ears burn as if I'd spent the day under a baking sun. The notion that everyone—even me—could be bought was something I found deeply unsettling. "But that's neither here nor there; he's up to something."

"You don't know the half of it," she said dryly.

"Yeah?" A cold stone dropped into my stomach. "Did he make you... any sort of offer?"

"He may have." Her face was damnably unreadable. "However, I'm going to see to some other matters before I can turn my attention to any other business offers."

"What kind of business?"

"The kind of business that requires discretion," she said smoothly.

"Don't fucking pull that evasive bullshit with me! What did he offer you? I'll double it if you tell me what those bastards want with Megaton!"

"I've agreed to nothing—"

"You all gettin' along, or do I have to separate ya?" rumbled a voice from behind us. Normally, people don't get the jump on me, but distracted as I was, I didn't hear Simms's approach.

I whirled on him, all piss and vinegar, "Go fuck—"

"Everything's fine, Sheriff," Audrey cut me off in a louder tone, voice exuding a forced, hard cheeriness.

"I ain't interrupting anything, then?" asked Simms. He wasn't even looking at the girl. All his glowering attention was focused on me.

"Mr. Moriarty and I were settling my tab," she said, "I was just about to go back to the room to collect my things."

"I'll just follow you back and make sure you don't forget anything," I said, just as falsely sweet as the woman.

"Not so fast," said Simms as I turned to leave. "We got some matters of our own to settle." Audrey slipped off, heading swiftly for the saloon.

"Oh, for Christ's sake, what, Simms? Did I kick someone's dog? Piss in someone's Sugarbombs?"

"Oh, nothin' much—just a little matter of that woman_ you shot in your bar_ last night,_" _he growled.

"Yeah? Little twat still breathing?"

"No. And she's got an uncle in town that's braying for blood."

"Did anyone care to mention to him that the bitch had her hand in my till when I shot her?"

"Last time I checked, stealin' ain't a capital offense. Not in _my_ town."

"And last time _I _checked, a fucking shoulder wound isn't fatal; maybe you ought to tell that shitkicker's uncle take it up with that piss-poor excuse of a doc."

It went on like this, neither of us gaining the high ground. Eventually, I flagged down a passing settler—a regular of mine—and got him to admit that, yes, he'd seen the girl rifling through the cash register right before I'd come out of the back room and shot her. I reminded Simms that his rules didn't apply in my fucking saloon, and that I hadn't made a fuss to him about Andy stabbing me, even though he'd thrown the first punch.

When I did finally get Simms off my ass and got myself back to the bar, the vaultie was dressed in her armor, all skintight leather and hardened, impregnable steel again, rifle resting in the crook of her arm, bindle of supplies slung across her shoulder. She looked completely different and eminently more threatening then she did in her little pink party dress. She was by the privy, harassing Gob, who was doing his best to clean out the toilet as I'd ordered.

"...droid. A metal man. Have you heard anything concerning a 'railroad?' And I don't mean the Metro."

"Talk to Manya," said Gob as he ladled a cup of unspeakably putrid nastiness into the slop bucket. The stink was truly horrendous, but I don't think it bothered him as much, being that he lacked a nose these days. "She's got a lot of sympathies for slav... people like that. Moira might know something about it too; she's got a thing for tech—"

"Less gabbing, more scooping!" I barked at him, and the thread of conversation between them was severed.

"Thanks," said Audrey anyway, and she set a pouch full of caps on the counter. She hesitated when she saw me, but her face was calm, cool and collected, her black eyes flat and hard, all surface shine. "Are we square?"

"Just get the fuck out of here," I said, and brushed past her without a second glance.

She didn't even slam the door. Just closed it carefully behind her. Polite to the last.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Business was booming. It was a busy time for Megaton. You might not think to look at it, but the town almost tripled in size once the summer heat broke. When the weather cooled somewhat, Megaton turned into quite the commercial hub. New steel from the Pitt, prime mirelurk meat from east, clean water that still bubbled up from deep in the Alleghenies, mech and tech from the far north where the Chinamen had been less inclined to send their bombs. And things even more exotic could be had from year to year. Roving libraries of holotapes and books, clothing that had nary a skid-mark in the seat, new substances to get fucked up on, and other things besides. Once, a very long time ago, I saw a horse. It was festering with sores and had little in the way of hair, but it was a horse none the less... or maybe it was just a very tall one-headed brahmin. Or perhaps I was drunk at the time.

At any rate, Megaton was the default place to do business, the town being almost smack in the middle of the Eye-Ninety-Five. Rivet City was too close to DC for comfort, and the other settlements lacked the infrastructure or the population for the traders to bother. Every bed, landing, and softer bit of ground was occupied, and the overflow split out of the Megaton's gates, manifesting in a shanty town. It seemed like every race, class and profession was represented. Every stool and chair had an ass on it night after night, keeping the register full and the booze flowing. I was busy pouring shots for a group of surly mountain men when the ghoul came up to the bar.

"I hate that asshole," growled Gob, slapping a neat roll of bills down on the bar counter with such vehemence that a couple of people started, including me.

I looked up. He wasn't talking to Nova, or grumbling to himself, but looking directly at me, meeting my eyes. His ruined hands trembled on the counter top, muscles of his face pulled achingly tight with self-righteous anger. I stared at him for a moment.

"Okay. I'll bite. Whom?"

"The asshole that wants you to make him a 'Bee's Knees'," he huffed.

"A _what_?"

Gob cleared his throat and did a high-handed impression of Burke that, I had to admit, was pretty good. "'Two shots of gin, a jigger of honey, lemon juice, and a dash orange zest. Chop, chop, _zombie_.'"

"Thinks he's the fucking Pope, do he?" I grumbled, pocketing the money. "I swear to God, he's just making shit up now."

"'Pope?'" Gob echoed, uncomprehending.

"Never mind. Have we any of that ice left?"

"Not much," the ghoul said sullenly. "In this heat? It only keeps for three days, tops."

"Well, if he keeps it up I'll have enough caps to fix up an ice maker of our own."

"It's not worth it! He's just such a fucking _prick—!"_

Quickly, before he had a chance to pull his hand back, my hand went to my hip, back to the bartop, and I rapped him one across the knuckles with the flat of my knife—not hard enough to do any lasting damage, but with just enough surprise and threat behind it to give him the message to mind his fucking place. He hissed and clutched his hand to his chest, pride stifled to more manageable level, but there was still a fair amount of indignation in his eyes.

"Been working here fifteen-fucking-years and you _still_ haven't learned to keep your voice down!" I growled at him. He grimaced, rubbed his hand, came back with a little blood on the fingers, and looked at me reproachfully. Ah, there we go—the kicked puppy face. God, I can't fucking stand it when he pulls that shit. I sighed. "Like anything he's told you is worse than what you've heard from me," I reminded him, going to the 'fridge for a handful of ice, plucking the gin from a shelf as I went.

"Well, no, but you don't mean it—" I turned and cocked an eyebrow at him. He elaborated, quietly: "—Not like _he_ does. Well, some of it, but it's not as... it's..." He trailed off, fuming.

"Got you so wound up you don't know whether to shit or go blind, sounds to me like."

I could relate. Burke'd been in town for all of a week, but already I was ready to murder him. The only thing that stayed my hand was his caps. Christ, if only I could figure out what the fuck it was he _wanted, _why he hung around. When I looked back on it, it had seemed like he'd been ready to divulge something, but when he'd mentioned Tenpenny... Well, that was the end of it. Should've heard him out the first time around, instead of letting my temper get the best of me. Should've, Could've, Would've. Ah, well. Maybe if I could get a hold of that fucking infuriating portable terminal—but, no, he carried it with him despite the inconvenience. It never left his side.

Burke'd stay from open to close, leaving only to head over to the Brass Lantern for lunch and dinner. Always the same chair, same corner, same pungent cigars, always sipping some foo-foo fucking complicated girly drink that required me to drop _everything—_always seemingly when I had the most shit on my plate to deal with—so I could prepare it for him. Sometimes Burke'd nurse the one drink the entire night, others he'd down as many as ten, but as much as he drank, never did I see him so much as tipsy. Occasionally, he'd take interest in a new traveler—and then apparently loose intrest in his line of inquiry, briskly rebuffing them and then sending them off, puzzled, irritable and grumbling.

"Look," I told Gob when I was within a scantling, voice low so that a certain asshole with a tin star couldn't overhear us, "he's loaded. So put up with him and his bullshit for a month or two, then when I've bilked him for all he's worth, I promise, I'll make him vanish like a fart in the wind."

Gob still did not look entirely pleased by the prospect, but "Yessir," he muttered anyway, and watched me morosely as I mixed a rough approximation of what the aforementioned prick had ordered.

"In the meantime," I said, and set the glass before him, "I'll have a bit of orange zest for garnish, if you'll indulge me."

Gob's face held a strange mixture of disgust and pleasure. He hunched over the drink, back turned to the wider bar. The ghoul peeled off a little of the more tanned skin from his forearm, shredded it with his filth-crusted fingernails and sprinkled the skin into the drink.

"'Atta boy," I told him, smirking, and he went off with a brief flash of an answering grin—but my good cheer evaporated when I turned my attention to another asshole that had made himself extremely unwelcome that evening.

Simms sat alone at a table, back to the wall; a smoldering, wet coal in an otherwise roaring fire. He'd been brooding there for the better part of an hour. The drunks eyed him warily, kept their voices down and cast him furtive glances over their shoulders, muttering darkly amongst themselves and pulling their chairs and stools well away.

"You ready for another?" I called to Simms. He looked up.

"No, I'm good," he said—and wasn't that the crux of the whole fucking problem of him being there? My bar attracted a certain type, let's just say, and while a post-War world was well past such petty trivialities as what was legal and what was criminal, people like Simms still made my people decidedly nervous. And the nervous don't spend.

I was surprised to see Simms there at all. The Brotherhood Outcasts had been in attendance earlier that day, hovering on the outskirts of of the shanty town that had blossomed outside Megaton. They were a fucking nuisance. Every year they took in any piece of tech trash that could light up or make a whirring noise and gave copious amounts of bullets in return. Disagreements that normally would have ended with a slap in the face or a tussle in the dirt erupted in firefights. As he sat there, I heard another staccato burst of gunfire in the distance, but Simms seemed not to note it, or if he had, ceased to care.

"Is there not some other business you could be ruining elsewhere in town?"

"Just havin' a drink," rumbled the Sheriff, "that a crime in your book?"

"No." Quite the contrary—a good deal of my little empire was built on the backs of shit-faced cads, but having Sheriff Simms sitting in _my_ saloon, tense and taut as a trigger, hunched over a glass of whiskey, was downright unsettling. And he was not drinking—he was _sipping, _like he was some sort of fucking teetotaler. "But I'd appreciate you finishing that and quit darkening my door."

"Noted," he said, and then resumed pretending to ignore me. I caught him regarding me more than once from under the brim of his shit-kicker's hat. He would look down again just as quickly, suddenly fascinated in the crescents of grit under his nails.

I could have let Gob handle the front and gone to the back office to get some work done, but I wasn't about to turn my back when Simms and Burke were in attendance, so Gob worked on inventory while I bartended. I was almost blind to anyone else in attendance but Burke and Simms.

So when someone said, "Mr. Moriarty," very close to me, practically right in front of me, I started a little. I looked up.

It was _Her._

"Ah, fuck," I said, the words leaving me completely involuntarily.

"Nice to see you too." A quirked eyebrow accompanied Audrey's completely nonplussed expression.

The hooks twisted in my guts and I felt a little disgusted with myself at the sight of her there, all clinging leather and twisted steel over deceptively soft skin. She could have been wearing a burlap sack and I would have had the same fucking physical response. She looked a little worse for wear, and reeked of of the Wastes, but otherwise looked cool and collected.

She didn't have the sniper rifle this time around, but something infinitely more intriguing: a plasma rifle. I'd maybe seen all of a dozen plasma weapons in my life, most of them carried by people who had more money than sense—and wouldn't have either for much longer—but all those shoddy hand-me-downs paled in comparison to this one. Even at a distance, I could tell that it'd been babied and revered by someone who had both loved it and known their way around a microfusion conductor.

"Who'd you have to murder to buy that piece there?" I demanded with a curt nod in the weapon's direction.

"No one," she said breezily, but there was that flash of steel in her eye. She glanced from me, to Simms, to the corner Burke occupied, and back to me. "It was a gift. The murdering I did for free." Cocky bitch. She unslung the rifle from her back, checked the safety, and laid it down on the bar among the cigarette butts and discarded glasses. Her eyes went back to Simms for a moment, who unexpectedly rose from his chair and tossed a shotgun round on the table in the way of currency. He left without a word, stepped out into the black of the gangway and shut the door behind him without a fuss.

"Keep an eye on this for me." It was not a request. What an odd thing—telling some else to handle your own weapon for you.

"Only if I get to use it when you do something irrevocably stupid," I said.

She paused, giving me a look that I wasn't sure how to interpret, then she said, "Agreed," with a thin, tight-lipped smile that did not meet her eyes.

And then she turned and made a bee-line for what I had been thinking of, disparagingly, as Burke's corner.

I watched as Burke looked up in surprise, eyes flashing, raking her up and down, brow furrowing. And then recognition must have dawned and he smiled at her from behind his smoked glasses and said something to her. She smiled graciously and replied in kind. I couldn't hear them over the din of the bar; there were too many people. I tried to watch them discretely from the corner of my eye as I mixed, served drinks, and collected caps, but I don't think I fooled anyone, especially as I watched Audrey settle herself down, not in an adjacent seat, but on the padded armrest of the chair that Burke parked his ass in day after day.

"So _that's_ the skank that has the town all a titter," murmured Nova. I'd been so preoccupied that I hadn't noticed her 'til she'd sidled up right next to me. Dully, I realized that the rifle was still centerpiece on the bartop and I quickly stowed it below.

"Don't you have some legs to spread somewhere?" I asked her and she gave me a sullen, flat look.

"I'm taking notes," she said, and took another drag off her cigarette, "Besides, I'm not one to miss a train wreck."

"What are you on about?"

She jerked her chin at the woman and Burke. "Wholesome to whore in a matter of weeks."

Nova had been more than a little pissed off after being rudely rebuked by Burke. I'd suggested she sleep with him to milk a few caps out (so to speak) and information out of him, but it hadn't gone well; he'd brushed her off like everyone else. They'd gotten into it, and I don't know quite what he'd told her, but she'd stormed out of the bar and could not be coaxed to return until she'd been threatened with bodily harm.

I was about to ask what she meant by taking notes, but then I saw Audrey toss her head, laughing, dark and sensual, exposing the long, elegant column of her throat and twisted a lock of what was left of her hair with her slender, scabbed fingers. And he lapped it up, fawning over her, and then his hand slid up her thigh and she didn't seem to mind at all—all this with done with a familiarity that made my guts churn. Distantly, I heard a snapping sound and I regained enough sense to relax my grip before the neck of a bottle of vodka exploded in my fucking hand.

He beckoned her down, and she leaned towards him, intimately close, eyes half-closed, an indulgent little grin fixed on her face. I could see his lips brush the reddened shell of her ear, and I swear I saw him mouth the words "business proposition," and she grinned even wider.

I almost went over there, almost, but something kept me rooted to the spot, kept me from doing someone damage. I planted my hands on the bartop, blood sang in my ears, and distantly I noted that Nova wisely backed away to join Gob in a far corner, more than ready to bolt if shit hit the fan.

Burke slid a hand into his suit jacket and pulled out something, deliberately obscuring the view with the fabric, and she took it, sliding it into the pocket of her pants before I got a proper look at it, but it couldn't have been much larger than her palm. He said something else, creepily intimate, and she laughed in such a way that it turned my stomach, chilled the sweat on my back and made my blood fester all at the same time.

She got up. I remembered Burke on the gangway, the way he had pulled his mouth open and revealed his tar-stained teeth and the way the crow's feet crinkled around the thousand-yard stare in his eyes. It had been the rough approximation of a smile, like he'd studied it from pre-War catalouges and bilboards. He was _really_ smiling there in the saloon, though. And the blood haze abated somewhat, slowly ebbed away with the first trebles of real concern—because whatever it was, whatever they had discussed, it had made Burke genuinely mirthful. Gut-wrenchingly pleased. Terrifyingly happy.

"I await our next meeting with bated breath," Burke said, and really seemed like he meant it. I could hear this well enough. Audrey wet her lips and didn't reply with words, but I imagine her eyes told him everything he wanted to hear.

She walked past the bar. She headed for the door. Her fingers hesitated on the handle. She turned her head and looked at me. All her previous gaiety had disappeared completely. The girl's face was ashen, as if Burke had somehow sucked the vitality right out of her. Her eyes were chips of ice, impassive and harsh.

I didn't know what to make of her look. Before I could say a word to her, she opened the door and vanished out into the darkness.

My attention swung back to Burke. He was on his feet. He stubbed out his cigar, carefully grinding out the smoldering end before he slid what remained back in to the confines of his coat. Then he threw back his drink in a fashion that suggested haste, grimacing as he did so. He headed for the exit.

The door burst open, nearly smacking Burke in the face, and Simms tramped in—and this time he was armed, assault rifle at the ready.

"I beg your _pardon—_" said Burke as if by reflex. And then he realized that the sheriff had his sights trained on him. His eyes narrowed. "You had best explain yourself. Quickly."

"Burke, I'm takin' you in," growled Lucas Simms.

Burke looked at first looked affronted, and then amused. "What? Did I neglect to properly dispose of my refuse in the cesspit? I apologize. One part of this town looks very much the same as the other."

"Yer under arrest for tryin' to destroy this town. Twice."

You could have dropped a fucking pin on the floor of the saloon and had it echo like a canon, quiet as that room had become. Hands were suspended in the action of lifting glasses to mouths, turning cards, lighting cigarettes. One man flinched and gasped when the match he had been holding burnt down to his fingers, but aside from that, there was no movement, no sound. All eyes were on Burke.

Burke was magnanimous. That old facsimile smile was tacked up on his face again, impervious to all the sudden laser-focused scrutiny. He actually chuckled.

"I've been accused of any number of ridiculous things in my lifetime, Sheriff, but this is by far the most slanderous; what sort of evidence do you present?"

"You commissioned a young lady to plant this device on the bomb in town," said Simms, presenting some kind of little gizmo with wires sticking out of it. Burke leaned forward and squinted incredulously, examining it as if it were freshly unearthed from an archeological dig.

"I'm afraid I'm not familiar with... whatever devise(device) that is."

"It's a fusion pulse charge," said a voice from the doorway. Audrey. "L.O.B. model D-77, retrofitted with a long range ultrasonic receiver," she said in a matter-of-empirical-fact sort of way.

"What she said," Simms agreed.

"And you take," he rasped, "the word of some transient, filth-crusted, wastelander whore over _mine_? I am a resident of this town. Surely your _wallet_ can attest to that."

"You propositioned Andy Stahl—a pillar of this community—the other day with the same offer, to the same end," rumbled Simms, "and I've got reason to believe you had a hand in the raider attack a few weeks back."

Burke's face went to wax. He had finally, mercifully, been rendered speechless. The man that had ceased to be surprised was staring at the vaultie, slack-jawed and wide eyed. That look was short-lived though. Soon, his lip curled, and his previously impassive eyes sparked.

"Traitorous harpy!" he spat, eyes locked with Audrey, who stepped back but did not blanch. I suddenly understood why she had handed her rifle to me before she'd gone to Burke; had she taken it with her, he might have more easily perceived her as the threat she was. Slowly, I reached down.

"You gonna come quietly or am I gonna hafta show you out?" said Simms, speaking as though nothing would give him greater pleasure. Burke looked at him as if he had quite forgotten that Simms was the one with his gun aimed at mowing level. He retrained his focus on Simms, nostrils flared.

"Very well, Sheriff. I will comply and see what sort of mockery your little band of savages refers to as a 'trial,'" Burke spat.

And then Simms did the most fucking idiotic thing he could have done, that anyone could have done in that situation—he trusted the man at his word. And turned his back for just the barest of seconds—to open the door, to confer with the vaultie, I don't know, but Burke was fast, faster than I would have thought him capable of being. But none of us had truly known what he was capable of, had we? In a land and age where everyone wore their courage at the hip or strapped across their back, it'd been assumed that Burke hadn't been packing. I knew the contrary, of course, but no one had consulted _me_.

His gun was pulled from his suit coat, faster than the eye could follow, and brought up to eye level. He said nothing. No witty quip or howl of fury, just a look of grim, fatalistic determination. I could see in his face that he knew everything had gone to shit, that his plans had been rent asunder, but that wasn't going to keep him from spending every bullet he had.

What he hadn't planned on, was Gob.

A blur come hurtling towards Burke as soon as the man's hand dipped into his coat, and with a cry he slammed bodily into him from behind. Remarkably, Burke staggered forward but still kept his feet. He squeezed the trigger. There was a _pop-pop-pop—_the first round hitting Simms in the back, the second and third going wild, finding nothing but fatigued metal. Burke roared, spinning towards Gob_—_

Roar turned into an ear-splitting scream. The gun had vaporized into hot plasma along with his hand and arm up to the elbow. I ejected the microfusion cartridge and was about to take another shot (I'd been aiming for the head and overcompensated for a kick that never came) before I realized I couldn't-the girl hadn't left me any ammo. There was no need, however, because Audrey disentangled herself from the wounded sheriff. I'd thought she was all graceful before, but I'd never seen her in her element.

She moved like a wild animal, all sinuous, fluid motion and coiled muscle. She wrapped one hand across Burke's red face and flicked the other across his throat. It was over so quickly that before I could register what she'd done there was blood arcing across the walls and Burke flailing at her ineffectually with his remaining limbs. The scream turned to gurgle and he collapsed on the floor in a heap.

"Holy shit," said Gob, breathless, breaking the stunned silence, looking down at Burke's blood on his shirt.

All eyes turned to Audrey, who was standing there, blood-splattered, black eyes flashing, wiping her knife off on the thigh of her pants before sliding it back into the sheath on her hip with a practiced flick of her wrist; confident, self-assured, and deadly as all hell—and I'd never wanted to fuck anyone so badly in all my life.

"You never pull that shit again, you hear me?"

Audrey and I were going through Burke's shack. The spartan interior didn't have much, but what was there was certainly enough to confirm the town's suspicions. I only wish we'd looked through there sooner. Audrey had his portable computer thing open on the bed, legs tucked under her. She looked as comfortable as you please, despite the fact that she had just slit the previous occupant open from ear to ear. She surveyed me coolly and ignored my previous demand.

"There are several files on this terminal that list Burke as the primary shareholder of the Talon Company. The payroll is a mile long..."

Shareholders? That suggested a level of organization and a complex chain of command that was unheard of in this day and age, save for the Brotherhood.

"And let me guess. Steve is the CEO or some other such illustrious title."

She frowned. "No. There's an Alistair Tenpenny, a Gorman Ben..."

"Burke was Tenpenny's flunkie. Should have known he had a hand in this."

"What is your history with Tenpenny?"

"Bloody. My Pa decided that he'd had quite enough of the weather in Ireland," I said, which was the understatement of the century, "and decided that we would take our chances in the Americas. Tenpenny was my Pa's business partner and had the last working steamboat in Ireland. The plan was to go to Baltimore, but Steve stabbed us in the back as soon as we got here, took all the guns and ammo that we'd brought as currency, and fucked off, leaving my Pa and I stranded. No guns. No food. Thank God Pa was rich in charm."

She seemed intrigued. "What was it like on the other side of—" I cut her off with the slam of a filing cabinet drawer. I'd noticed that she had a habit of diverting the subject when the topic wasn't to her liking.

"I don't appreciate being left in the dark—especially when someone plots to do such bloody business in my fucking bar," I growled.

"And had I told you what he had planned for Megaton, what would you have done?"

"I should be thinking that was obvious," I said with a crack of my knuckles. She rolled her eyes.

"Yes. You're a big man. We understand. But people will admit to anything under duress. And then we would likely be in the dark as to whose machinations brought that attack weeks back. And this Tenpenny person more than likely would have had time to line up a more successful attack. I like you, Colin, but you let your cunning play backseat to your emotions, more often than not."

She was right, but I would be damned if I admitted as such. "And maybe if you'd given me a wee bit of a hint, Simms wouldn't be laid up and at the tender mercy of Doc Church."

"And then you may not have been here to relieve a dead man of his possessions."

"Touché"

"Aren't you a least bit curious as to why Tenpenny wants to wipe this town off the map?" she asked.

"Enlighten me," I said through gritted teeth.

"From what I could extrapolate from Burke," she said, "Megaton is a thorn in his side. He finds personally insulting that a group of 'barbarians' can form a thriving community out of garbage. Financially, he realizes that Megaton is more advantageously situated for trade and resources."

I grunted. "Makes sense. If Megaton were wiped off the map, the trade routes would divert West, more than likely."

"Megaton spoils his view of the Washington skyline as well. What's... left of it to be viewed, I suppose."

"So he wants us out of the picture so he can get fresh mirelurk meat on his table. And he's willing to murder to get it. God almighty..." I shuddered to think of how close the town had come to utter annihilation. Fifty years worth of accumulated memories and wealth that could have, literary, gone up in smoke. And human lives would have been lost too, I suppose. She saved the town, she did.

"Simms didn't think you could be trusted," she said in the silence that followed.

"That fucker," I fumed. "And why not?"

"You were Burke's landlord. It was understood that Burke was giving you large sums of money in addition to rent. Plus, I'm sure he found some of your past dealings suspect."

"Uh huh. As opposed to yours, sunshine?"

Unexpectedly, she brightened a little at this. "I'm sure Simms wouldn't have trusted me—had you not been a gentleman and kept your word."

I softened a little. A gentleman. _'I like you, Colin.'_

"I'm relieved," I admitted, "that you've got a bit of heart in you, lass. You had me convinced you were going to do some sort of ugly business for him."

Her mouth twitched into a smile. "Was that a 'thank you?'"

"Well, I wouldn't go _that_ far. Although I've grown fond of my current arrangement of atoms, I'll admit. I wouldn't make a handsome mushroom cloud."

Audrey closed the portable terminal with a protesting squawk of hinges. "Why were you so upset the day I left with Burke?"

"Was it not obvious?" I growled and turned away, busying myself with the filing cabinet that still contained an obscene amount of very marketable items. She sighed, and then drew herself off the bed and stood, arms crossed over her chest.

"The other week when I offered you my affections, you responded quite rudely. I honestly didn't think it would bother you."

"Your _affections_," I scoffed, thinking back to that sticky, hot morning in September, "Trading poon for a clean bed and a bite to eat are not what come to mind where _affection_ is concerned."

She didn't frown at this. Actually, the woman smiled serenely. "Well, when a tactic works, why abandon it? Besides, how would you have reacted had I approached you differently? If I had gone down on bended knee and proclaimed my undying love? Or had said, 'Good afternoon, Mr. Moriarty,'" she donned the ridiculous accent popularized on Daring Dashwood's radio adventure program, "'My nether regions require your attentions, posthaste! Let us away to the boudoir and succumb to our base and carnal desires!' You would have laughed in my face."

I did laugh, but my mind was uneasy. Was she saying what I thought (and hoped) she was saying? That she would have willingly... Not now. I had been too pissed off at her so shortly before, and things were still too fresh. My ears were still ringing from the discharge of weapons in too tight of quarters.

"Simms will probably want you to take a look at the bomb, when you get the chance. The Rev will pitch a fit, but—"

"I didn't, you know, sleep with him. Burke," she interrupted, with a hint of awkwardness and trepidation that made me think of days past. I stared at her, and thought of how far a cry this warrior was from the soft, pampered thing that had blown into the saloon all those months ago. I felt like she had flipped a switch in my churning gut and relief immediately flooded me.

"Thank fucking Christ. Why did you not say so?"

"A lady doesn't kiss and tell," said Audrey, fixing me with a little grin.

"You're Goddamned infuriating," I announced.

The woman came forward, hips swinging, and gently closed the drawer I was rifling through with a battered, slender finger. She looked at me imploringly.

"And?"

She smelt like blood, sweat, leather, and—rather unexpectedly—lavender. In her boots she was almost as tall as I was.

"It made my blood boil to see you with that fucker," I admitted, staring her in the eyes for the first time in that shack. "There. Hope you're ever so pleased. I wouldn't make it a feather in your cap, it doesn't take too much to rile me these days."

"Good," she said simply, and with a hand she pushed me back against the filing cabinet, her eyes all fire.

"The fuck are you_—_?"

And then she pressed her lips to mine, and I ceased to think of much of anything at all.


End file.
